In citing my cross-cultural experience, two episodes of my life quickly jump to mind. The first involved spending four summer months in close proximity to a native Eskimo village in SW Alaska accessible only by plane or boat. The second is more recent and involves spending 40 days in different parts of Thailand.
For four summer months in 1998 I was employed as a seasonal wilderness ranger by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on Togiak National Wildlife Refuge in SW Alaska. This position involved sharing a remote field camp with one other person for 81 consecutive days within a vast (>2 million acre) designated Wilderness Area. The nearest development and habitation was 20 river miles (absolutely no roads in these parts) away in the form of a native Yupik Eskimo village (Quinhagak...pop. 550). In addition, my partner for the duration of this assignment was himself a Yupik Eskimo who had grown up and lived his life in Quinhagak. As a result of my association with him I received valuable peeks into the native culture and quality interactions with his friends and relatives. The village served as a valuable resource to us throughout this time as we would visit it to resupply or to conduct other business at least 1x/week. At the end of our field season I was invited to attend a meeting with other government representatives, commercial guides that operated on the river, and residents of Quinhagak to discuss what went well and where there was room for improvement in sharing this valuable resource while maintaining the native subsistence use of the Kanektok River.
Years later in November and December of 2003 I embarked on my first experience with travel abroad. The reasons for choosing Thailand stemmed mostly from my interest in Buddhism and part of my stay involved spending ten days practicing meditation at a Buddhist wat (monastery) in the north. While it is easy for a western, english speaking tourist to get by in Thailand without learning more than a few catch phrases of thai, I was more interested in meeting and spending time with natives than in interacting with other western tourists. I managed to achieve this and made close friendships that I maintain yet across the miles. In the process I made great strides in the use of their language that I continue to work on with interactive computer software since returning. Again, this was my first experience with travel abroad and I was genuinely interested in observing what sort of traveler I was rather than telling myself I was the sort of traveler I wanted to be. I believe this had a lot to do with how positive an experience I had as in effecting this approach I was able to avoid many of the pitfalls that result from convincing ourselves that we are something that perhaps we may not be.
For four summer months in 1998 I was employed as a seasonal wilderness ranger by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on Togiak National Wildlife Refuge in SW Alaska. This position involved sharing a remote field camp with one other person for 81 consecutive days within a vast (>2 million acre) designated Wilderness Area. The nearest development and habitation was 20 river miles (absolutely no roads in these parts) away in the form of a native Yupik Eskimo village (Quinhagak...pop. 550). In addition, my partner for the duration of this assignment was himself a Yupik Eskimo who had grown up and lived his life in Quinhagak. As a result of my association with him I received valuable peeks into the native culture and quality interactions with his friends and relatives. The village served as a valuable resource to us throughout this time as we would visit it to resupply or to conduct other business at least 1x/week. At the end of our field season I was invited to attend a meeting with other government representatives, commercial guides that operated on the river, and residents of Quinhagak to discuss what went well and where there was room for improvement in sharing this valuable resource while maintaining the native subsistence use of the Kanektok River.
Years later in November and December of 2003 I embarked on my first experience with travel abroad. The reasons for choosing Thailand stemmed mostly from my interest in Buddhism and part of my stay involved spending ten days practicing meditation at a Buddhist wat (monastery) in the north. While it is easy for a western, english speaking tourist to get by in Thailand without learning more than a few catch phrases of thai, I was more interested in meeting and spending time with natives than in interacting with other western tourists. I managed to achieve this and made close friendships that I maintain yet across the miles. In the process I made great strides in the use of their language that I continue to work on with interactive computer software since returning. Again, this was my first experience with travel abroad and I was genuinely interested in observing what sort of traveler I was rather than telling myself I was the sort of traveler I wanted to be. I believe this had a lot to do with how positive an experience I had as in effecting this approach I was able to avoid many of the pitfalls that result from convincing ourselves that we are something that perhaps we may not be.
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