Bursting your bubble and other travel lessons

I've been fortunate enough to spend quite a lot of time traveling lately, first to Mexico in March and most recently to South Korea last month.

Any trip to another country is an educational experience in itself; there is a limitless amount to learn about any new place, from culture to history to geography and more.

What I always find most fascinating are the distinctions in human interaction as taught by society. The way people of different cultures look, talk and touch each other can be startlingly variant.

I've especially noticed the differences in accepted personal space when traveling abroad. Americans, in my experience thus far, have a far greater "bubble" they surround themselves with when around other people.

My very first realization of this fact came a few years ago on a trip to England. During a trip to Marks and Spencer, my first encounter in a crowded place there, a woman brushed up against me. Like many Americans would do, I waited for her to apologize. When she didn't, I was appalled, and have to admit, gave her the you-are-the-rudest-woman-in-the-world stare, though only to the back of her head. And then somebody else bumped into me, again without the "excuse me," we Americans are so fond of saying. Gradually, I recognized that they weren't being rude, they were just proceeding as their own society dictates. Like in most of the rest of the world outside of America, it's OK to touch another individual without practically falling at their knees in apology.

I truly understood how wide this gap was on my first evening back in the States after a month in Great Britain. While making a trip to the grocery story, a man, 20 feet from me, moved his cart out of the direction I was walking, and he said, "Sorry." I remember smiling widely, laughing inside as I realized just how ridiculous this exclusively American practice really is. We're so scared to intrude each other's personal space here that we'll apologize for it long before we even have the possible occasion to do so.

In San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas this spring, I was struck by the oddity of something you'd never see in America: As people boarded the bus, they did not look for the empty seat, two rows from anyone else. They sat down directly next to the stranger in the front row.

Can you imagine doing that here? We sit as far away as we can from one another, especially while using public transportation. We will go to great strides to retain our bubbles of personal space, often passing up the better seat, or moving far out of our way just so we don't have to share the same air as another person.

After a recent conference shortly after I got back from my Mexico trip, I tested sitting next to someone during a lecture. Plently of open seats, but I sat myself down next to another woman. She scooted over a chair. Her discomfort was thickly tangible.

Again in South Korea last month, I found the notion of personal space to be almost non-existent. There, people will nearly knock you down to get where they are going, but there is no reason for them to acknowledge that they've bumped you. Society there holds many rules and courtesies, but even brushing up against another person while moving at full stride does not constitute a faux pas. Koreans also touch each other far more than Americans. Friends, male and female, naturally, and very heterosexually, interlock arms or hold hands in public they way we shake hands.

Straight American men may find it appropriate to slap each other on the butt while playing football, but never in a million years would they walk arm and arm down the street. And as much as I love my girlfriends, I know it would feel extremely awkward for us to hold hands for longer than a few minutes.

Despite our differences, I always reach the same conclusion after a trip abroad. Whether you grew up in Gunpo or George, the human experience engenders many common bonds, reassuring us that we are indeed more alike than we are different.

Erin Stuber is the Columbia Basin Herald's managing editor.