I watched The Amazing Race for the first time last night.  I am generally not a fan of reality TV and rarely, if ever, watch these kinds of shows but I have to admit that I got pulled into the game last night and found myself rooting for Tammy and her brother Victor as they valiantly tried to jump off of a three meter diving board and hit the water at the same time. (they finally gave that up and decided to swim instead!)

This week’s episode found the contestants navigating the streets of Beijing, without benefit of a translator.  If you have ever travelled in China without a translator, you can relate to just how difficult this can be.  Difficult yes, not impossible.

The teams, with the exception of Tammy and Victor who speak Mandarin, stuggled to communicate with the various taxi drivers and others who helped get them to their destinations.  Granted, it was likely frustrating and stressful.  After all they weren’t ordinary tourists simply seeing the sights they are competing for $1,ooo,ooo. 

However, one team let that frustration bubble over into racism.

This team was visibly upset when they had difficulty communicating.  It was as if they expected a cab driver in Beijing to speak English and were pissed off to find that he didn’t-can you say Ugly American?.

I might have been able to slough this off as the stress of the game.  However, in the previews for the next week’s show was quoted as saying, “this is why I didn’t want to come to China-it sucks.”  It struck me that it under stress that we show our true colors. 

Sure, we can say the right things when we are in control but when the going gets tough our filters are strained and deeply hidden feelings and biases surface.  And yes, we Americans are arrogant.  We do expect everyone to speak English.  We do expect that things work as they do in the United States.  And when that doesn’t happen we get pissed off.  Irrational? Yes.  Arrogant? Yes.  Racist? You bet. And on national TV no less!

I am just glad that my Chinese-born daughter didn’t see this show.  And I hope that everyone realizes that the comments and attitudes of the contestants don’t reflect China or the Chinese-but they do tell a disturbing story about the contestants.  So if you see something similar while watching TV with your kids you can take a great leap forward by discussing the existence and dangers  of biases and stereotypes.  You can help break the cycle.

With Respect,

Deb

PS: here’s a tip-look for a young person when you need an English speaker in China.  Kis are taught both Mandarin and English in school!

I promised my daughter I would take her to Sea World in San Diego, CA for Thanksgiving-who wouldn’t want to share this festive day with Shamu?!

It has been many years since I have travelled to San Diego, so I was a bit flummoxed about how to begin to search for places to stay that were child-friendly and near the attractions we would want to visit-the beach, the Zoo, Sea World etc. I also wanted to be able to take cabs and walk places to eliminate renting a car (for some reason this has always been my least favorite part of traveling).

Looking online for accommodations and flights proved to be challenging-first the amount of information is enormous and there was no ability to compare and contrast, so the back button on my browser was working overtime.

Fortunately, I found Hotel Reservations. The site is very straightforward and has all the bells and whistles that a traveler might need-but they don’t get in the way of the information. It took me some time to get used to the way the information was presented-there is a lot of information in a little bit of space, but once that happened, I was good to go.

I started with hotels and was pleased to see that there were LOTS of choices-bed and breakfast, luxury, budget and everything in between and the prices were competitive-if not better than other sites. There was extensive information on each property-including distances to the places we want to see- which allowed me to further hone in on the area that was best for us. The best feature I found was the ability to compare the finalists and pick a winner-one that I don’t think I would have found on my own.

The search for flights was a not as successful, probably because we will be traveling at Thanksgiving. While the flights were limited, they were extremely economical and I liked the ability to view the results by price, total duration and total flight time-when traveling with a seven year old, travel time becomes quite important.

The vacation packages were also quite good. The ability to identify attractions we wanted to be near, took some of the guesswork out of the mix-and eliminated the need to make numerous phone calls to figure out if I would spend the week in the car or not.

Since we are also looking at a trip to China in the not-to-distant future, I also peeked at the hotel and flights for that journey. I have been shopping that trip for quite a while and was pleased to find out that the prices and choices were plentiful, varied and well-priced.

After some searching-I sure got the travel bug. Thankfully, travel is one great way to expose kids to other cultures, traditions and people, so I can feel good about giving my daughter great experiences that I can also enjoy-without breaking the bank.

Check em out and maybe we will see you in San Diego!

With Respect,
Deb