Tourists tend to find hard to adapt
to other cultures, but it’s something that should be done due to respect. While walking through the street in other
countries, as a tourist you observe the vast differences you might have with
the people that live there. As a Puerto Rican, I consider myself quite close to
the Americans but the differences in culture are explicit. The perception of
tourists might change from place to place; in Washington D.C. how the tourists
are treated might be quite unpleasant.
The relationship between the people
that live in D.C. and the tourists is one of antipathy. The taxi drivers who
deal with tourists everyday do not show any interest in sharing a nice
conversation with them. Myself, being a tourist felt discriminated. Taxi
drivers left you waiting when called or simply said no when you waved your
hand. They made questions in a rare way as if we were too different to them. I
used family members to go on their own and evaluate how they were treated also.
I concluded that they just didn’t enjoy tourists. There was one driver that
focused on talking about the bad English accent that the Puerto Ricans have.
It’s absurd that they complain about our English, when we are more versatile in
languages than most of them.  |
| White House - Washington, D.C |
I believe that in the island we
sometimes are nicer to foreigners than to other island civilians. Because of
what I’ve seen my whole life I was quite shocked at Washington D.C. with this
behavior. Soon after taking a look around I remembered the Ugly American. We
talked in class about how this term refers to the Americans that visit and
criticize every aspect of our culture. I noticed that it wasn’t just present
when they visited, but also when we came to their place. The taxi driver that
criticized our accent was just the best example I could find. The discrimination just experiences I think
was majorly by the othered African American cultures, because of the
