i don't know why, perhaps it is because i have lived in america my entire life, but i find asian and african cultures to be very interesting. i think it has to do with how ancient they are. there are so many layers to those civilizations and america is such a new country. so we don't have the deep religious tradition that other countries have practiced for years.
also, i would like to think i represent the american that most people around the world don't know. i'm educated and i travel and i speak three languages. unfortunately, what people see is the loud uneducated american middle - aged person with no respect (they don't even know they are being disrespectful) for another culture. some people think they can tromp all over and not be aware that people do things differently all over the world. i want to be more conscious of the way people live. as humans, i have come to understand that we are really the same. we all want to be loved. that's the bottom line.
nepal interests me because i know nothing about it. so does tunisia. so if you could enlighten me more about your culture, i would love it! i am reading a book about brazilian history right now. as i may have said, i was born in rio de janeiro and i had gone back to brazil 4 times before living there last year. i wanted to get back to my roots, because i was adopted by an american family when i was a year old. so i never really got any immersion into the brazilian culture. this is also an interesting culture to me because of it's blend of so many cultures. they are african, indian, japanese, dutch, french, german and portuguese, mostly. all these elements combined make for varied religious practices, types of food, different looking people, not to mention the size of the country! you get so many different climates and landscapes depending on what part of brazil you are in.
so i am writing a book about being a solo female traveler living in brazil. i thought i should do some research on brazilian history so i have a reference point for describing my experience living there. i wanted to originally do a book called "7 months" which would describe my experience living in different countries. the duration of my time in each country would be 7 months, the time i believe it takes to truly leave your own country and immerse yourself in another culture, to begin to understand how things work within that society. but finding work was a problem and continues to be a problem in under developed countries, because of the low pay and also because of my citizenship. i may be able to travel on a work visa, but i do hair for a living, and leaving the states proved to be very difficult for my career, as many clients had moved on. so i had to build my clientele from scratch. so there are financial issues.
my goal is to become a travel writer. so i have been reading a lot of travel magazines, which i have always done, to be able to follow and learn the manner in which articles are written, and who they are written for. it's a highly competitive field. but i'm passionate about it.
at some point, i want to travel to nepal. i would like to spend months there, watching how people live. i believe it will be mundane.... people washing clothes, going to work, talking on corners, just like they do everywhere. but i also imagine i would see things i have never seen. i'm intrigued by their tradition of burning a body after it dies and that you believe that "every human body is made by 5
elements Water, Air, Sky, Earth & fire. Once you get your human life with these
elements, when you are dead than you need to return back to those elements. So
we burn the body nearby the river." this doesn't exist in america. we just burry someone in the ground and everyone has a different idea of where that body or that soul resides.
i hope to take a ride on your elephant one day. he's cute. i always cry when i see them at the zoo. always.
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