Sorry foreigners...do you mind?

This may sound a bit like venting...and I think actually it is.

This past week found me travelling on a bus up north to meet my parents and sister. We came to a sudden stop in the middle of nowhere as a car had just gone off the road and was in the process of being hoisted back onto the road. As we sat there people started to alight from their cars including a couple in their early twenties. The girl was very obviously bored out of her brain and so proceeded to lie across the front of the car in various suggestive poses. Soon her boy friend was out of the car as well and the two them proceeded to arrange themselves very suggestively across the front of the car. Allthewhile more and more Hondurans were captured by this display.

I stood in the middle of the bus and was more and more embarrassed - and grew more and more angry - this was exactly WHY white girls have to deal with the reputation in Honduras that white women are "loose."

Please. When you are visiting a country, how you behave, how you treat the people of the country, every step, leaves behind baggage. And the people who are foreigners trying to make a home in the country and build relationships with the people there have to deal with the baggage that you leave behind. The stereotypes and the impressions that visitors to a country leave with the people affect the relationships that we build.

So please, next time you are visiting another country, please think of how you are representing others who bear the same skin colour, language, religion, whatever, to the people you are visiting.