Diversity Exploring

A Nigerian man helped me with the laundry machine yesterday.

A Pakistani man showed me how to use the bus and brought me to his neighborhood, a predominately Pakistani neighborhood.

In this Pakistani neighborhood we ate at Lahore’s Kebab & Pizza House run by Kashmiris from India.

I’m the only native speaking English student in Intercultural Communication.

I’m one of two native speaking female students in the department, but the only American.

I’m one of four native speakers in the entire department, two are American.

My department has students from Korea, Taiwan, China, Brunei, Vietnam, Spain, Algeria, Germany, Pakistan, the UK, the US, Japan and Iran.

I went shopping with my Ghanaian neighbor and we met his Nigerian friend in the city center last week.

I hear Arabic, Spanish and French on the bus.

A Chinese woman asked me for advice.

I’m working on a project with a woman from Iran.

My Sri Lankan neighbor advises me as I attempt to make dahl. She tasted my dahl and approved.

I share my fridge with a man from Korea. He told me where I can buy Japanese udon and miso.

There is an American down the hall who lived in Arden Hills, MN and went to college in Iowa. So did I.

The Chinese restaurants in my neighborhood all advertise “Fish & Chips”.

The “Fish & Chips” shop in my neighborhood sells chicken tikka and naan.

In high school ‘diversity’ was across town.

In college we talked about ‘diversity’ in our seminars, we looked for it on our campus but we didn’t see it.

In my professional experiences, diversity has been limited to interacting with 1-2 different culture groups at once.

In the last three weeks, I have interacted with more people from different cultures, religions and countries than in my entire life.

Sometimes you don’t need to travel to find the world, you just need to know where in the world to go.