.

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The way we described “becoming intercultural” today in class, especially the examples with a Venn diagram, really reminded me of places like Chinatown, specifically the one in San Francisco because I am most familiar with it. The idea in the essays that describes the way one breaks away (or is possibly pushed away) from his first culture when he begins to emerge himself in the new one, can be more clearly explained to people like me (with exposure to only one culture) by thinking about Chinatown.

1. It is in America, but it is clearly not very “American” from outward appearance (to Americans). The markets, the foods, the customs, the people…everything seems quite foreign.

2. It is in America, so it is clearly not very “Chinese” from outward appearance (to Chinese). They are surrounded by all things American in a popular tourist town. How traditional can it be? 

These are obviously not the views of all people in America or China, but I am simplifying to make a point. I believe people working towards becoming intercultural must face some of the same thoughts from both their home country and the new country they are falling into.

“Great American Cities- San Francisco.” Vacation Rentals Lounge. Accessed October 3, 2013. http://www.vacationrentalslounge.com/great-american-cities/san-francisco/things-to-do/index.aspx.

“Where to Travel to in the USA.” The Global Voice. Accessed October 3, 2013. http://www.culturecoach.biz/wordpress/tag/transcontinental/.

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I can not begin to think about multicultural reach and becoming intercultural without thinking about this amazing girl. Malala’s message has touched men and women of every race across the globe. She stood behind her beliefs and was targeted and shot by the group she was speaking out against. Today, about a year later, at only sixteen she is a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize and “will join the ranks of Martin Luther King, Lech Walesa, and Mother Teresa.”

Eversley, Melanie. “Malala Yousafzai Favored to Win Nobel Peace Prize.” USA Today. Accessed October 11, 2013. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/11/malala-yousafzai-nobel-peace-prize/2964649/. 

“Malala Yousafzai.” Blogspot. Accessed October 11, 2013. http://bilder.bild.de/fotos/malalayousafzai_34950333_mbqf-1381390027-32909836/Bild/2.bild.jpg.

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When we talked about “When Languages Die” in class, my mind immediately went to Latin. I have always been infatuated with literature and grammar, and as I delve deeper into new language courses in my college career, my love for Latin continues to grow every day. Latin is dead in the technical sense of the term; it is no longer spoken by a people, but wow is it alive in every other way. I took three semester of Latin when I first got to KSU and began to mourn its death immediately, but when I started to think about it…it is alive in nearly every word I speak. LONG LIVE THE GHOSTS OF LANGUAGES.

“Roman Military Diploma.” Wikimedia. Accessed October 18, 2013. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Roman_military_diploma_Carnuntum_02.jpg.

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Soon after the very recent and violent protests in Istanbul and soon after the government’s plan to build a “replica of a Ottoman-era military barracks” in one of the only green areas left in the city (Gezi Park), Istanbul hosted an art expo that ended less than a week ago. The art show boasted the work of around ninety different artists and drew in an enormous crowd. The name of the show “Mom, Am I a Barbarian?” speaks directly about the violent protests and political discontent felt in the country…but did the show really do what it was supposed to do? "How do we not cheapen what happened during Gezi, yet show that it is important?" asks a local man who owns an art gallery nearby. "I don’t think that there was anything the Biennial could have done that was going to be clever enough, funny enough, smart enough, sensitive enough after what we saw in the public space this summer." The Istanbul Biennial has been taking place in Istanbul since 1987, but this year was very different as it took place during "a once-in-a-century civil awakening" (said Biennial director, Erdemci). How can you make something so devastating, painful, and real better with art? Is it even possible?

“Istanbul Biennial: Solidarity with Gezi Park Protestors.” Deutsche Welle. Accessed October 25,2013. http://www.dw.de/istanbul-biennial-solidarity-with-gezi-park-protesters/g-17100634.

"Mom, Am I Barbarian?" E-Flux. Accessed October 25,2013. http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/mom-am-i-barbarian/.

Yackley, Ayla Jean. “Wrecking Ball Sets Tone for Istanbul Art Expo After Protests.” Reuters. Last modified October 17,2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/17/us-turkey-art-biennial-idUSBRE99G0VU20131017.

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Participating in the module of Japanese pop-culture this week and giving my Year of Japan presentation to a class really made me realize just how  much Japanese culture influences my, personal, daily life. The top photos are from an app. that I have on my phone (one of three), called Kawaii Vol. 0, which is a Japanese magazine that focuses fully on Japanese Kawaii-inspired fashions in major cities like Osaka and Tokyo and districts like Harajuku. It updates every few weeks with new pictures of mostly college aged men and women in amazing fashion in Japan. The second set of pictures is from a wonderful store called Daiso Japan that I am having trouble surviving without! I visited Daiso nearly once a day when I lived in Seattle. It is pretty much a Japanese dollar tree (but everything is $1.50). They carry everything from shoes to umbrellas to toiletries to figurines to a whole room of chopsticks and bento boxes! Nearly everything in the entire store is themed with cute (Kawaii ^.^) little things like strawberries, bunnies, cupcakes, and countless other tiny, adorable, pink things! The last two pictures are of the wall about my bed and of a couple the bento boxes (which I prefer to American lunchboxes) and stuffed animals I have collected. I look at and interact with things from the Japanese culture every single day of my life, and I am glad that the module did a great job in calling my attention to that.

P.S. I have not stopped listening to AKB48 since yesterday. :)

"Photos for Daiso Japan." Yelp. Accessed 22-Nov-13. http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/daiso-japan-anaheim?select=0o9b4RX7aIdzLhykEi8rRA#0o9b4RX7aIdzLhykEi8rRA

Gastelum, Gabriel. "Daiso Seattle." Wordpress. Posted 22-Oct-08. http://violentpillow.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/daiso-best-store-ever/

"Kawaii Vol. 0." Google Play Store. Accessed 22-Nov-13. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.androbook.material110820165515_1efffcce

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We didn’t go into huge detail today about Shinto beliefs, but what we did talk about definitely sparked my interest. I have heard only mismatched snippets of information about Shinto my whole life, so today I vowed to finally do some research when I got home. I typed a few key words into Google and (of course) Wikipedia was the first thing to pop up, so I took a peek at the article, as it is usually a good place to start if nothing else. I hadn’t read more than the first paragraph before my brain was flooded with images from my favorite Hayao Miyazaki movies. I typed “Miyazaki Shinto themes” into the search bar and sure enough, a multitude of articles about Miyazaki’s inclusion of Shinto perspectives and motifs was at my fingertips. If you are not familiar with his work, Miyazaki is a wonderful and imaginative director, producer, animator, artist, screenwriter (the list goes on..) from Japan. Some of his most popular works, including Spirited Away and my favourite, Princess Mononoke (I dressed as San and my friend as a kodama for Dragon*Con this year!) are absolutely full of characters and storylines with very obvious Shinto influence.

PS…don’t worry, my research about Shinto did not end at Wiki. :)

"Shinto." Wikipedia. Accessed 15-Nov-13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto

Pictures:

"Silent Volume.” Blogspot. Posted 25-Jan-12. http://silent-volume.blogspot.com/2012/02/spirited-away-2001.html

"Princess Mononoke." Blogspot. Posted 22-Sept-12. http://omega-warzard.blogspot.com/2012/09/princess-mononoke.html

"Kodama (Spirit)." Wikipedia. Accessed 15-Nov-13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodama_%28spirit%29

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The 2013 “Miss Universe” pageant began this week in Moscow, Russia, and one of the first competitions was a costume contest. The women in the contest wore everything from a Transformer costume (Miss USA) to a colorfully beaded representation of an iguana (Miss Curacao), but they all included some lovely representation of the history and art of their home countries. I have to start out by saying that I have never really been a fan of beauty pageants or the things they stand for, but I was taken aback and made an exception for this because it is such a perfect and eye-catching way of displaying beauty norms around the world. There are a total of eighty-five pictures of different Misses around the world on the site that I found, and the differences in each country’s “ideal beautiful” put a smile on my face. I chose only a few (wish I could have put every one of them on here!), but I tried to pick a few with some stark contrasts. The top photo is of Miss Guam; the middle left is Miss Nigeria; the middle right is Miss Ecuador, and the bottom is Miss Slovak Republic. Each woman has a different body type, different hair, different make-up and face shape. There were women wearing very skimpy costumes, and there were women nearly covered from head to toe. Trapped inside the USA, with it’s very streamline beauty ideals, this different look at beauty is SUCH a breath of fresh air!

Szelwach, Frank L. “2013 Miss Universe National Costume Show.” Yahoo TV. Posted 4 November 2013. http://tv.yahoo.com/photos/2013-miss-universe-national-costume-show-1383606027-slideshow/.

^ Go check it out!!!

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When I was doing research on Kiwis for my moving abroad to New Zealand project, I could not help but notice that almost every single picture with a Maori man or woman in it showed him or her with wide open eyes and a tongue sticking out. Curious as I was, I looked it up and sure enough, it is a tactic used by Maori men in a traditional dance, called Haka, during times of war, modern day sports, special occasions, and funerals. During times of war, the large bulging eyes and distorted tongues serve to intimidate the opponent and show their fierceness. After reading about it, it made so much sense that I was almost surprised I had to look it up. It reminded me of the little dances that football players do on the goal line after they score and of the way teams all put their hands in and chant before games. Humans and their behavior are really so similar when you get down to it.

Chapman, Paul. “New Zealand could adopt Maori names for main islands.” The Telegraph. Accessed 1-Nov-13. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/9966100/New-Zealand-could-adopt-Maori-names-for-main-islands.html.

"Royal Tourer New Zealand." APTouring. Accessed 1-Nov-13. http://www.aptouring.com/Trips/NewZealand/NCC18.

"Haka." Wikipedia. Accessed 1-Nov-13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka.

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As usual, The Daily Show, even with it’s lack of John Stewart-ness in this episode, does a great job of talking about those things that make some people…shall we say, less than comfortable. It is disturbing really, how much racism STILL affects people every minute of every day. Being white, I do not have to deal with racism towards me personally, but I know how it feels every time I go out with one of my best friends (who just so happens to be a black male). I guess they assume that we are a couple (?), and people actually, blatantly STARE at us. They whisper. They walk just a little bit further away. It makes my stomach knot up just thinking about it.

Racism is a disease. How will we cure it?

“The R-Word.” The Daily Show. Accessed September 27, 2013. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-6-2013/the-r-word.

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So I started out this morning looking for a picture of the Silurians from Doctor Who (a reptilian humanoid race that lives underground on the earth) because what could more perfectly represent VAST racial differences, ethnocentrism, and learning to live together than Silurians and humans together on one planet!? Then I realized that it related even more perfectly because the main Silurian character in the most recent seasons of the show is Madame Vastra, and she is married to a human female named Jenny. Talk about an interracial couple!! Jenny actually started out as Madame Vastra’s maid, but they fell in love (aww). Maybe the human race, as similar as we really are to one another when you get down to it, should take a page out of Jenny and Vastra’s book and start to realize that we could make this whole sharing a planet thing work a whole lot better if we could just stop seeing our differences in skin colour (or cold blooded versus warm blooded-ness) and realize that we are all the same mushy pink colour on the inside.

"Vastra." Tardis Data Core Wiki. Accessed: September 20, 2013. Http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Vastra.

Accessed: September 20, 2013. Http://24.media.tumblr.com/e92c5106691c41c123bf3dca9491893f/tumblr_mfq9txehh71qg7zsno1_500.jpg

Accessed: September 20, 2013. Https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS7Cs0HwSWZYQsZwkY2woMkc99SHl—eBdpC-qDvsN1_eb7IQlVgA

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Since I am planning to study abroad in Germany within the next two years, I went searching for something this week that would relate to my plans. While I was looking, I stumbled across something very different in this wonderful book by Yang Liu. (If you want to look at it, the whole book is online here:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/14276662/Liu-Yang-East-vs-West-Ost-Trifft-West). Yang is from Beijing, China and moved to Germany in 1990, so she has a very unique, first hand perspective on Eastern versus Western cultures. Personally, I was very excited when I saw the pictures and showed my dad almost immediately (just as I have been making him read articles out of our text book) because of the cultural conflicts he faces daily at his job. He has been working for a Japanese company for the past thirty years, and he still faces difficult or uncomfortable situations at work daily. The mother company is in Japan, so many of the people he works with (nearly 50%) are here directly from Japan and are not planning to stay in the States permanently. The Japanese and American communication within the office is hard for reasons far beyond just language barriers; for example: when one of my dad’s Japanese managers or co-workers sends an him an email, he (or she) copies his boss, his boss’s boss, all of the people in the department, etc. This is insulting to my dad who feels like they are checking up on his work, when really it only has to do with their cultural norms. The pictures in Yang Liu’s book PERFECTLY illustrate this difference! The first one displays problem solving: West is very direct, East is more complex. The second shows highly individualistic Westerners versus community-oriented Easterners, the third:  time-oriented West versus more (time) relaxed East. I would definitely recommend clicking the link in the text to go look at the other pictures…they are quite eye-opening!

Liu, Yang. Ost trifft West. Mainz, Germany: Schmidt Hermann Verlag, August 1, 2007.

Liu, Yang. “Yang Liu Design.” Yang Liu Design. Accessed:  September 12, 2013. Http://www.yangliudesign.com/

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"I had never occurred to me…China doesn’t have to be at the center of the world!" -Bu

Lisa Bu’s wonderful thoughts on reading really spoke to me because books have always been the easiest way for me to connect to the world and people around me. For her, they were a way of expanding her knowledge and finding a more beautiful, richer life. Books and this thirst for something more led her to move from China to the United State in 1995, where she connects to her new culture quickly by diving into the books that this new world has to offer. Lisa begins to compare and contrast books on similar subjects and by similar people when she gets to the United States. One of the things I found most incredible was her first comparison…the maps shown to Chinese students and the maps familiar to American students. Until watching this, I had never thought of the possibility of different cultures quite literally “seeing the world in a different way.” Through these extensive book comparisons, Lisa begins to gain a fresh, healthier outlook on her family life, peace within herself, and comfort in a completely new and different culture easily.

"Instead of lost in translation, I found there was much to gain." -Bu

Bu, Lisa. “Lisa Bu:  How Books Can Open Your Mind.” Ted Talks. Posted May of 2013. http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_bu_how_books_can_open_your_mind.html.

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This is the wall of an agency in São Paulo, Brazil by artist Guilherme Kramer. From far away, the faces blend together and form a sort of pattern…a pleasant mixture of black and white that is generally easy on the eyes. Close up, you begin to see each individual face more clearly. It becomes a completely different viewing experience. The striking differences are almost overwhelming and even confusing. It makes me think about America, our familiar “melting pot.” Are our names, our stories, our friends, and everything we surround ourselves with the only things that keep us from blending into a puddle of cheek bones and eye balls and lips and noses? Or is it something more?

Kramer, Guilherme. “I See People in the Crowd.”  Guilherme Kramer Artworks.  Accessed August 30, 2013.  Http://www.guilhermekramer.com/I-SEE-PEOPLE-IN-THE-CROWD.