Meeting new people is sometimes a stressful situation if you feel like you have to go and meet someone. If you are new to an area then you sometimes feel obliged to get out and make friends so that you can feel comfortable in your new area. But sometimes friendship just happens and sometimes a cultural friendship can cross your path. A cultural friendship is a friendship between two people of different cultures and you can learn a lot from a productive cultural friendship. It can also be said, however, that you can learn just as much from a rather non-productive cultural friendship.

Learning new things by meeting new people can be extremely invigorating and interesting. If you are a guarded person then in these times of terrorists and war you are probably not too inclined to reach out and meet people from cultures that differ from yours but you may want to re-think your attitudes. When a country goes to war against another country, or when terrorists decide to target one country or a whole group of countries, it is usually safe to say that not everyone from that culture is a war monger or a terrorist. Some years ago there was an exchange student that came from the Middle East to an American school and these were very young children, perhaps 9 years old. The exchange student was a little girl from the Palestinian territories and she was asked to speak to the class about where she came from and to tell the American children about her country and her people. The American children were all fascinated with this as, at age 9, this was the first person from outside the United States that many of them has seen and they were very interested to hear what she had to say. But when the little exchange student started talking she started to ask the American children why the American government was selling bombs to Israel so that Israel could kill the Palestinian people. It became very obvious to the teachers that the Palestinian girl was much more advanced in world politics than the American children and very soon the American children were very confused and did not know what was going on. The teachers put a stop to the Palestinian girl’s questions and asked her to sit at a desk. Through all of that the American children still surrounded her and wanted to be her friend. Some of the American children wanted nothing to do with her as they were a little confused at what she said and a little insulted. But if both the exchange student and the American children had taken the time to become cultural friends before her speech then things may have been different. This is a classic example of how getting to know someone from another culture can help people to become more tolerant and better people.

Getting to know someone from another culture is difficult but allowing ignorance to breed due to a lack of understanding is even more difficult. The next time you see someone that you are hesitant to know just because they look like they may be your enemy you should go up and shake their hand. Remember that countries that hate each other are usually governments that do the hating and not the citizens. If given a chance it is possible that the citizens of warring nations can become friends in spite of the differences their governments may have.