Some thoughts

I have a friend who is incredible in many ways. She has a determination that could move mountains and a genuineness that is truly hard to find. But what I love (perhaps most) about her is her curiosity about the world and her love to learn. She has traveled to so many places, lived in 3 continents, and spent a significant amount of time in a 4th. Recently  she wrote a blog entry about her travels and this is what she said:

It is without a doubt that traveling opens not only our eyes but our minds. It shows you that there is always more than one way to do something; it shakes and challenges our thoughts and beliefs. I cannot describe that strange feeling when we realize that what we grew up thinking and perceiving as the way things should be or as the truth, need not necessarily be the case. The world out there is so big. After you travel, you learn to appreciate diversity, you learn that things need not always have to be the way you used to believe they had to be, you also learn to appreciate what you have at home a lot more...

 I have never been good with words, but yes! She has taken a million tidbits of thoughts in head and put it in a nice succinct paragraph.

There has been a lot of "wait a minute....what?!?!" moments here in Korea, followed by "weird...that's so interesting...". And the next thing you know, it has changed your world.

It's like those optical illusions. What is this a picture of? 

Right away I saw the young woman. 

I could see the young woman and nothing else. 

But then somebody pointed out the old lady to me. It blew my mind.

How did I not see this before?
Now I can't NOT see the old lady. 

Everything is socially constructed. We are so constrained and defined by our culture, our language, our society. Take this as an example:

You'd think that colour is a pretty universal thing, that anywhere in the world, green is green and blue is blue, right? I mean, just look at it!

But Wait, are they different colours, or shades of the same colour? Hmm...
In Korean:
Blue = 파란색 /paran sek/
Green = 초록색 or 녹색 /chorok sek or nok sek/

The green in their traffic light is the same colour as the one in Canada (it's pretty much the same everywhere as far as I've seen, well, at least that's what my brain tells me).
So in Korean, what colour is the traffic light? What's your guess?

I'm pretty damn sure it's 초록색 or 녹색 /chorok sek or nok sek/.

Wrong.
It's 파란색 /paran sek/.

Go ahead,
"Wait a minute....what?!"
"Weird...that's so interesting..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language

Now we can get into the whole issue of linguistic relativity and the whole Sapir-Wharf hypothesis debate and we can argue forever. But lets not, anyway, that's just an example.

So I challenge you, go explore, get your mind blown and open your world!