Sunday, February 19, 2006

Americans don’t travel much

I consider myself fairly well traveled, but something I’ve noticed when trekking around a foreign country. You don’t run into that many Americans, there’s a lot of Germans, Australians, Japanese but only a few us. What brings this up is that my cousins from Australia are visiting right now. Posted a few pictures here. My cousin Greene gets 6 weeks of paid leave and can take up to half a year of unpaid leave. My other cousin Golden makes it to the United States almost every year and has spent months traveling all around the orient and Europe. The only other American that personally know who’s done close to as much traveling is my little sister, she spent most of a year back packing across Europe and even stayed in a Kibbutz in Israel.

According to my cousins, the world laughs at many of our problems, Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate? What’s the big deal, she showed a nipple. Guess it depends on the viewpoint of where you are standing, compared to many Australians we’re a nation of prudes (have you watched Eurotrip?) Yet match us up next to a middle east country or a country under a dictatorship, we’re the shining beacon of freedom. The grass is always greener on the other side. As a nation I do know we don’t have a good feeling at a personal level about what is going on in the world. We might watch CNN daily but it’s just a news story.

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