Back from Spain

Wow. That was one of the most memorable trips since coming to Europe. Spain's mix of Latin and Arabic cultural makes it standing out from the rest of the countires I have visited. Pictures and stories will follow, but just one quick post about an incident on our last night in Spain.

On the last night of our stay in Spain, me and Vince made an awesome dinner and were ready to enjoy our last meal in Spain. During the dinner, we overheard couple people chatting besides us about international issues and one guy who appeared to be an American made the comments that he feels all the Canadians hate Americans, and he also thinks that by putting a Canadian flag on our backpacks is an away of saying “I don’t want to be an American”. I was a bit disturbed since he probably made that comment up based on the encounters with a few Canadians if not based on pure feeling and imagination.

Couple personal comments,

We would like to distinguish ourselves from the Americans because we are fundamentally different people. We may share the same continent and the same language but our historical background is totally different, and therefore our cultures are different. Are Chinese people and Korean people are the same just because we share the same skin color? Are Indian and Pakistani people the same just because they are neighboring each other? The answer is of course not.

Putting a flag on our backpacks is not directly directed to the Americans, it’s just a way of saying I am proud to be a Canadian. It’s like putting a name tag on your shirt the first day at your work, a way to open yourself up. Putting our flag on our backpacks also forces us to be good ambassadors of our country in behaving ourselves, since any negative actions will be immediately attributed to our country.

We have a good international reputation, and it needs to be up kept. We just know how to do it right.