In the last 30 years I’m proud of/grateful for: my cultural experiences.
By this I mean my privilege to experience cultures other than my own. In college, I had a lot of friends and teammates who were international students and in my very limited travels “away” to college (25 miles from home), I got a taste of life through their eyes—their language, music, food, pop culture, etc. I also studied Spanish and spent a summer studying “abroad” in southern Mexico where I ate delicious, home cooked Mexican food for every meal, made lots of friends, gained new tastes in music, and learned a lot about myself in the process. (Oh yeah…I also improved my Spanish communication skills.)
I’m grateful for these opportunities because I know not everyone has a chance to study abroad or make friends from countries I learned very little about in my life before college (and admit I likely wouldn’t have in my adult life in my chosen career field).
Some token favorite phrases I can say:
-“Cheers!” and “bless you” (after a sneeze) in Czech, Slovak and Russian
-“Run like a rhinoceros over the hill” in Afrikaans
-“Blueberry” in Slovak
How I celebrated: first, with Mexican food for lunch on Saturday and then later by attending Worldfest, a multi-cultural festival hosted at a local park. There were tents set up for pretty much any country you can imagine, often including food and/or native livestock to pet.
P.S. My favorite non-American food is Mexican food (like my readers didn’t know that!). There isn’t much better than 2 months of Mexican food for every meal. I miss Xalapa…
