Trip offers cultural perspective

Hyacynth Filippi

Published: March 26, 2004, Bradley Scout

Our plane landed at O’Hare International Airport. My heart sank, and not just because of the landing — our journey was over, and none of us were ready for it to be.

Slovenia, a small country in the Balkan region in Eastern Europe, had made its mark on us.

As I sat there in that small plane during our flight, I took out my journal and tried to log my memories, so I would never forget — so I would always remember what I had learned, felt and experienced. But for some reason, words just couldn’t capture anything I so desperately was trying to convey.

How do you describe one of the most amazing weeks of your life to people who weren’t there to share it with you? I just couldn’t find the words to express how this journey thousands of miles away really impacted my life.

But explaining it became a little bit easier when I got home and headed for my computer after our nearly 24 hours of travel back to the U.S. An e-mail from one of the Slovene students waited for me in my inbox. I opened it, read it and realized that he too could not find quite the right words to express what we had all experienced. And that is the best thing about bonding with people — words simply become useless. Despite our quite different cultures, societies and thoughts and slight language barriers, somehow we managed to connect with each other and build curiously strong relationships in the short, 10-day trip.

The students from the University of Ljubljana, who hosted myself and five other on- and off-staff Scouters, taught me more than I could ever have imagined. Flying nearly halfway across the world made me realize things about myself and my culture that I never considered before. Mainly, I realized how ethnocentric I am.

The first night I was there, I was amazed at how well the students spoke English ... and Spanish ... and Italian ... and German ... and French ... and Serbian. Seriously, almost every person we met spoke about three different languages (and oftentimes more) fluently.

There I was still struggling with the intricacies of English and Spanish. So much for being culturally sensitive and intellectual.

As the days went on, I also enjoyed incredible hospitality, very much unknown to most Americans.

The students took time out of their busy lives and dropped much of what they were doing to spend time with us. We visited at a time when they had an important test (think midterms, but harder), yet they still spent as much time with us as possible. They showed us around their country, answered our somewhat silly questions and put up with us whipping our cameras out of our bags every five minutes. They put their lives on hold to enhance our understanding. They didn’t care so much about where they had to be or what they had to do — they cared about our experience.

But perhaps the most important realization I took away from this trip was an inherent difference in thought. As Americans, we walk around basking in fear, waiting for something bad to happen, worrying about our futures, tomorrow, next week and so on.

The students in Slovenia didn’t express this deep-set worry. They take more time than we do to focus on the here and now. They live life, rather than plan for when life will begin.

Sure, the country was gorgeous with its high, snow-capped mountain tops and beautiful, archaic buildings, but it holds more than just an outer loveliness. It encompasses a group of people who changed my life in extraordinary ways by showing me a different perspective.

Stereotypes were broken on both sides and thoughts were transformed. And most importantly, we realized that the only thing that really separates us, is an ocean.

Hyacynth Filippi is a junior journalism major from Peotone. She is a Scout copy editor. Direct questions, comments and other responses to hfilippi@bradley.edu.