People help us become citizens of the world
 
BY RYAN E. SMITH
BLADE STAFF WRITER
 
 
America is a weird place.
 
If you don't notice, it's probably because you're too used to it. What you need for a new perspective is to speak with someone from another country.
 
You could try Eva Zarzuela, a student from Spain at Springfield High School who was blown away by the idea of a mascot, in her school's case a blue devil with a big head and padded muscles, appearing at football games. (Football games themselves are a whole other issue.)
 
Or talk to Siyuan Zhang, a Chinese student at Maumee Valley Country Day School who couldn't stop laughing when he learned about the strange use some teens here have found for toilet paper: wrapping it around houses as a prank.
 
Then there's the matter of why the nickel is bigger than the dime — which still perplexes Ece Erbil, a Turkish student attending Woodward High School — as well as our peculiar culinary customs, like eating sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving.
 
"Wow! I've never had them before and I really hate them," said Christian Steinborn, a student from Germany attending Sylvania Southview High School.
The U.S. starts to look a little different through those eyes, right? The good news, my fellow Americans, is that your weird country exists in a weird world. You just need to get to know it better.
 
 
That's where Eva and the others come into play. As much as people like to talk about globalization in terms of big things — sweeping changes in economics, communications, and culture — I like to think of it in these smaller, human terms.
 
For me, that human was named Igor.
 
I know what you're thinking but you're only partly right. Yes, he's from Eastern Europe. No, he's not a hunchback.
 
I met Igor — an unusual name even in his native Hungary — more than 15 years ago when we were both in high school and he was an exchange student.
 
At the time, all I knew about the country was that it could be paired with Turkey and Chile for lame food jokes. Now, thanks to a lasting friendship that has taken me to Budapest and beyond, we both know a lot more about each other's homelands.
 
I can, for example, tell you what it's like to soak in a 16th-century Budapest bathhouse as old, wrinkled, naked men exercise nearby.
 
I can tell you how cool it is that Hungarians still have the 1,000-year-old mummified right hand of their first king and parade it around town once a year.
 
More important than all of this, I can tell you that I actually care about Hungary. I cheer for its athletes in the Olympics. I notice Hungarian names in film credits. And I eat at Tony Packo's with extra pride (although I'm still bummed that they didn't consider Igor important enough to sign one of their hot dog buns).
 
Thanks to Igor, something about the way that I looked at his country — and with it the rest of the world — changed. Suddenly I was interested in it. I wanted to see more of it.
 
Together we have, whether it was walking into a voodoo shop in New Orleans or celebrating the running of the bulls in Spain, relishing the beautiful fact that our standard of normalcy isn't the only one.
 
And tomorrow, when I join my friend in Budapest on the day of his wedding, it will be yet another reminder of our friendship's greatest lesson: becoming part of today's global society requires getting to know it personally.
 
Contact Ryan E. Smith at: ryansmith@theblade.com or 419-724-6103.
 
Originally published in The Blade on Friday, February 27, 2009
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