Recipe #1- Perception

"People always see what they want to see, they don't always see what you see" -Pellegrino Riccardi

Hello beautiful earthlings! 

So today we are going to serve you a special menu based on this recipe called "perception". 

Perception can be like a mirror to your own preconceived reflection. 

Sometimes it's all about the mind and what you think and what you want to see regardless of the apparent black and white. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMyofREc5Jk

Watching Mr. Riccardi's fruitful sharing about his intercultural experiences had our eyes glued to the screen while repeatedly nodding our heads in a synchronized motion. Never to forget the laughter that we shared while agreeing to the points. 

We would like to lay down one of Mr. Riccardi's many brilliant points that emphasizes on being "accepted and familiar". It is to adhere to different ideas understanding the variation of ways in executing a single action. For an instance, changing our eating style from bare hands to chopsticks throughout the time in Korea was relatively awkward at first. It was quite funny that some of our friends went over the moon whenever they saw a fork in a restaurant.

Regardless of the differences or in other words the colorful diversities that vary among people throughout this planet, it is a grievous sin to jump into negative conclusions especially in uncomfortable environment. The image of people staring at us throughout the subway ride is still fresh and evident at the back of our heads. Izzy was so scared that she thought those people were going to confront us and tell us to get off since we were wearing hijab until one of them came to us and told us that our hijabs were beautiful. We received buckets and gallons and trucks of compliments. We realized that some of the fears that we had were nothing but just an ugly combination of ridiculous assumptions and paranoia. 

You walk, you experience, you learn.