Hello you, sitting infront of your screen!
What do you do if you want to explore an entirely new country and culture? What do you do if you want to see if all your prejudices about a certain country are true or false? You could do a simple research about the country in question, or you could take things to the extreme the way that I am going to do. Tomorrow, I am getting on a plane for one of the longest flights of my life. I am going to the land Down Under, to Australia!
I am going to spend a few weeks together with a family called Johnson in Sydney, to learn more about the culture, the language, and the way of living in a completely different country on the other side of the Earth. The flight is almost a mind-blowing 24 hours in total, so I will have plenty of time to get used to the thought of what I am actually doing. So far, I’ve been in some kind of denial about leaving everything that’s comfortable and safe here at home, to go live in a completely new country of which I know very little! But this is also a part of my plan in travelling there, because I want to test the possible prejudices I might have about Australia. See if they are true, or if I should re-make my preconceptions about the folks from the Land Down Under. I think we all have prejudices towards people, no matter how many times we claim that we don’t. If I were to ask you to think of a French person, I am pretty confident that you’ll get an image in your head resembling a tall, skinny man with black hair, a bit of beard and a beret, holding a glass of wine in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. Am I right? No? What if I asked you to picture an Aussie then? A man of average height, muscle-y and with a cowboy hat, with the accent of Crocodile Dundee, capturing crocodiles for a living and eating rattlesnakes for breakfast?
The point I am trying to make is that most of us have prejudices about a certain group of people, or individuals too for that part, no matter how much we try to deny it. When we meet a new person, we automatically register their looks and behavior before even talking to them, and making preconceptions about them. This is because we have matched a certain group of people with a certain way of expected behavior based upon how the majority of that group acts. As both you and I know, prejudices are far from always being true and many times you can find yourself realizing your preconceptions were completely wrong! Sometimes they are true though, but that is a whole different matter…
So, I am going to Australia. The plane leaves rather early tomorrow morning, and I can’t wait to be off! My bags are all packed and piled up down in the hall, so I should be off to bed so that tomorrow arrives faster! I’ll get back to you guys as soon as I’ve settled in.
Bye!
//Alicia
