Can we learn to laugh in another language?

While having my morning breakfast today, I was thinking of something: building on my previous post, where I was wondering if we can really understand and adapt to a new culture. I would like to ask why you think some movies are made to be exported and others are made to stay in house. Several times in my life, I noticed that the best movies I saw in a certain country were never exported while many less interesting ones were on foreign markets. What factors determine if a film is exported or not? Are they the ones that have the most stereotypes and ignore much deeper and mind-blowing cultural issues (these are the most interesting films, in my opinion)? Yes, I guess.

For example, I was thinking about the movie by John Turturro, Passione. To my knowledge it was not super successful abroad. No doubt, on the other hand, that a movie like Gomorra, about the mafia, sells better. What would an American, Asian, African, Australian, Indonesian, etc..etc.. person "see" in the movie Passione? Would they be able to appreciate it? Movies meant to be exported are often a "simplified" version of local cultures, but why so? Why keep limiting ourselves to stereotypes? Why not export the sincere, incomprehensible movies and slowly let foreigners adapt to them? Is that too complicated? Is that related to our obsession with simplifying everything in order not to deal with complexity?

When living in another country, I always get informed about the local comedians. I want to understand why people laugh with them and, if I don't find them funny, I want some local friends to explain to me why I am supposed to laugh at that particular moment! Someone could argue that you cannot learn culture-based humor, but I would try to challenge that argument. Because I did learn to laugh when French people laughed!

After spending some time living in France, I began hearing people talk about the Bronzés series, I tried to watch that movies and I found them totally uninteresting. But then I thought: I have to understand why everybody in the room is laughing but me. I told a friend and he suggested we watch the movie together, then something super fun happened. In the beginning he was "explaining" to me when to laugh and "why" and I mostly laughed because he was laughing. But then, as the movie went on, I started to laugh "with" him and not "because of" him. I felt great inside: Yes! I had managed to change my culture-based conditioning and get into a new one.

It was only after being able to understand and feel why those movies made people laugh that, in the end, I could decide by myself that that kind of movie was not my favourite one and that that kind of humor was not what cracks me up; but this time it was not because of the cultural barrier, it was just because of my personal taste! I could overcome cultural barriers and start from the same base of a real French person.

On the same token, I did experiments in other countries and with dramatic movies. If I find a movie from another country boring, I always wonder if it's because of my personal taste or because I didn't "get" it. This process is fascinating and this approach brought me to really broaden my mind. Perhaps, relating to my previous post, Competence or awareness, I would say that the simple fact of traveling around the world and living in another country without wondering "why" people like this and that, "why" they laugh for this and that, etc... etc.. diminshes our chances to step out of our cultural conditioning and step in a different one.

E.

Negotiation of identity?

How do we negotiate our identity, or identities, when learning and speaking another language?

Is identity fixed or does it develop and change in a process of continuous negotiation?

How do we perceive ourselves when dealing with different worlds? And how do these worlds perceive us?

Is it necessary to negotiate our identity in order to learn another language, or rather to really “feel” it, instead of simply putting the new words together in shallow sentences? Are we ready to accommodate our identity?

Is the classroom a place where it is possible to reach the stage of negotiation of identity with the new culture and language or not?

Which kind of activities may we suggest to learners, in order to encourage them reflecting on the process of negotiation taking place within themselves? And what if they are not willing to negotiate?

I believe that being ready to negotiate ourselves is very enriching and makes us glimpse new perspectives in life, broaden our perceptions and multiply our viewpoints. Negotiation of identities is not only related to culture and the way we deal with it. It is related to language itself. How do we perceive ourselves when speaking a different language? Our voice changes, and so does the way we shape our thoughts.

As concerns myself and my experience with foreign languages, when I look back, I deeply realize what negotiation of identity means and I clearly see the opportunity to entering several individualities. I perceive myself differently when speaking another language, and I am not talking about an artificial Paola, it is rather another aspect of me, which I, myself, discovered through the contact with the new language and culture. Besides, my life experiences in other countries of which I could speak the language made me widen my perspective and consider my “culture” from several points of view.

I believe that negotiation of identity and the openness to it have a strong link with motivation towards the language in object, especially on an emotional plan. I notice that I can speak the same foreign language well and smoothly in some occasions or periods of my life and then be almost unable to utter a correct sentence in others.

When I happen to wonder about how my life would have been and how I would have seen the world around me, and even myself, if I hadn’t studied Arabic, I am sure it would have been very different from now. Speaking Arabic and living in some Arab countries made me a different person. The process was not easy and smooth. I had several moments of “crisis” and rejection. It was a very deep process which I do not think can happen in a classroom.

Besides, I noticed different “levels” in my learning process: from studying the classical language at university to being able to really speak the daily language and communicating with people. Only the latter gave me the exciting feeling that I was a fluent Arabic speaker. Before that, every time I tried to express myself, in Arabic the person would answer in another language, such as English or French.

With regard to my experience with English, I believe that it is significant to highlight the importance of motivation and emotions in language learning. I studied English for a short while when I was a child and I really enjoyed it because I liked the idea of speaking another language. When I went to middle school, I decided to study French since I wanted to learn a new language.

Later on, at university, where my major was Arabic, I decided to study English as well, but this time my decision was dictated by the awareness of the necessity of speaking English because of its “power” and presence all around the world. Therefore, I started not to like it and I was not able to speak English until I lived and worked in Cardiff for six months. Words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth before that. Then, since my six months in Cardiff were very interesting and enjoyable and I found people very welcoming and open, I started to enjoy the contact with English language and its sound. On the contrary, since I am in London my level of English worsened, both because of the lack of opportunities to speak it (especially with native speakers) and of my perception of London as a not very welcomingcity.

by P. Casola (Italian and Arabic teacher)

A conversation with Chinese and American students

On the wake of my previous post, I would like to share with you a video. Here it is.

It's really interesting, 'cause American and Chinese people talk openly about how they see each other. Some barriers seam possible to overcome, others less.

I constantly question myself asking: Are there cultural aspects you can accept and overcome and others you just can't?

In this video, they talk about PATIENCE, it is a good point indeed.

What about kidding? Is it possible to understand another culture's irony? Will you be able to laugh genuinely after some years living in another country? Is it possible to be able to have fun in a new way? After all, even laughing and having fun are culturally based concepts.

In Italy, we have a saying that goes: Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi. It basically means you should marry someone from your own country. ;-) I don't think I agree but my point is: To what extent can we actually overcome cultural differences? Can we do that in all contexts?

E.

Are stereotypes real?

Stereotypes: Where do they come from? Are they really real?

I started thinking about the nature of stereotypes when I moved from Italy to France. That’s when I had my first baptism about how my people are perceived abroad.

The Italian guy is macho. Women usually stay at home and obey. We live with our mothers until more than 30 years old. We keep loving our mothers even after we leave. We are not very serious and reliable. All men use hairgel and court all women. We are never on time. We like la dolce vita. We use gestures a lot. We speak too loudly. Men often cheat on their partner.

For the first time, I saw an image of myself and my people that I had never seen before.  But that image didn’t really mirror my experiences as an Italian. All the boyfriends I had had before moving to France were Italian, faithful, respectful and never asked me to stay at home and wash dishes, on the contrary they were usually the ones who cooked and cleared the table. I was 24 and I had moved abroad alone. I was always on time and I never liked the movie La dolce vita, even if I watched it several times trying to like it. I used gestures a lot but I spoke very lowly. Oh! I forgot something: My boyfriends had never used hairgel! I was puzzled.

I started trying to understand where all these myths came from and I realized that many of them came from cinema, all those French people had watched all the movies with Sofia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio de Sica, ecc…ecc…  but none of the real people I knew and had been hanging out with corresponded to that image. (To what extent is cinema inspired by real life and to what extent is it based only on a few characteristics and behaviors of the country of origin, extrapolated from a much deeper and much more complicated reality?) 

Later on, when I went to the US, I received a different feedback: Americans saw Italy as a Garden of Eden where everybody wears Prada bags and beautiful shoes, where plants grow lushly and people don’t need to work to eat, because food grows on trees. Mothers cook very well and women are beautiful. Life is dolce and the Vespa is the most wonderful bike ever created. We play beautifully the mandolin, cars are sublime and architecture brilliant. 
They were stressing completely different things. As for me I had never had a Prada bag, I liked beautiful shoes and being well dressed and I knew for sure that food doesn’t grow on trees in Italy, unfortunately.

At this point, I would love to check the opinion of South-American, Asian, African and Australian people about Italy and the Italians. It might be something else again. 

My point is that stereotypes are real and unreal at the same time. They actually stem from some real aspects of a culture but then they are rearranged according to the values of the foreign culture that created them. Everyone spots a part of the whole and interprets it according to their own values. That’s also why some foreign movies are successful in some countries and not in others, because the perception of what they talk about will necessarily be mediated by the target audience’s culture.  


How can we deal with stereotypes ? I suggest to float among them without fumbling about, backing them up sometimes and distancing ourselves from them at other times, 'cause they might be real for certain geographical areas, social classes, religious groups and levels of education but not for others. Maybe Prada bags and the elegant shoes the Americans were talking about are easier to spot in the rich Florence, Milan and Venice, whereas most Italians have surely never seen nor desired them. Social conditions and geographical locations can no doubt contribute to stereotypes. 


So: Does spaghetti really grow on trees? Yes, but only in Ticino and Po Valley. Have a look here. 

  
E.

Brazilians as Latinos (!)

Coming to the US taught me a lesson about my identity. I had always seen myself as being "very Brazilian": I love Carnival, I can dance samba quite well, I drink coffee like crazy. However, being Latin-American was a totally alien idea to me. I never thought of the things Brazil and Bolivia, for example, had in common. Living here made me understand that Brazilians have a lot more in common with "Latinos" than I thought we had.

That perception came through American eyes, who referred to Brazil as "South America", a term that at first upset me. "Why South America?", I thought. "We don't even speak the same language." A year later, I got to know that yes, Americans are right. I am South American, I am Latina, and I love it!

What we call Pão de Queijo (Cheese Bread) in Brazil, Bolivians call Cuñapes. Carnival is very popular all over Latin America. Brazilian soap operas are watched and adored in Colombia, El Salvador, Peru... We do share so many characteristics.

I feel lucky for having learned that. People in Brazil have no idea of how South American, how Latino we are; neither do they think this is a positive thing, I suppose. I guess they would have to understand all the issues about ethnicity always being discussed in the US in order to make sense of what I am saying.

Most Brazilians would be shocked to see that, here, Brazilians are not considered "white people". Here, being white does not only mean having light skin. It means being part of a historically priviledged ancestry, and we Brazilians are not a part of this group. While this would certainly upset some people in my country, it has been a very liberating experience for me.

Now, every time I have to declare my race/ethnicity ( something I had never had to do in Brazil), I am no longer in doubt: I just check the Hispanic/Latino box (even though I do not speak Spanish) and think of all the possibilities this new identity has brought me.   

                                                                                                                   F.

Competence or awareness?

Darla Deardorff wrote a book about Intercultural Competence. But what do you think of this expression?

I personally like it, but I loved it when a colleague of mine from China said she perceived it as arrogant. She asserted that in her home country such a concept would not be understood. Competence? Why do we need to talk about competence? Is that something that someone has and someone else doesn't? In my opinion: yes, but I wouldn't say that this competence is given by only traveling and living abroad.

I often happened to think about this: traveling and living abroad in itself does not give you any competence, you can live abroad but stick to your habits, beliefs, behaviours and not open up to the diversity of the world. Or you can never leave your home town and be the most generous, sharing, helpful and sympathetic person who makes no difference between human beings from different cultures. I know a few people like these both.

So... is competence the right word? How can you acquire such a 'thing'?

It's sure that, for me, everything started when I first visited a non-European country. I felt really lost and shaken up as for my personal and cultural identity and that helped me a lot understanding that not everybody in the world thinks and feels as I was taught to think and feel. But is that a competence that someone can teach us? Can we learn that at school? Maybe we can. Maybe history, foreign languages, literature, geography could be taught in a perspective so to slowly broaden our horizons and perceptions. In that case, people who are not led by their own life experiences to reach that comprehension and awareness, could be helped by forward-looking professors and teachers to bridge that gap. Nevertheless, neither teachers nor professors can teach us something we are not ready to accept. 

Intercultural Competence would be that ability to not judge cultural behaviours and not to look at them as if they were weird, bad or inadmissible. They are just culture-based. Nothing is universal. Everything is cultural. Not even the way we raise up our children, teaching them what politeness is, is universal. So, of course traveling and living abroad can help a lot, but not always, not for everyone.

Sometimes a good teacher can help. Sometimes our own sensitivity will do it all.

So, since that is not something you learn, cause you need to have a correspondence within you, wouldn't it be better to call it awareness or even openness?

E.

Happy new mess

Theories are great. Human beings try to understand themselves and the world around them using categories to make this possible. Statistics, hypotheses, ideas. This is just fine. But can we be flexible and free enough to step in and out of these categories?

I was thinking about this, when I came across Bourdieu’s interview by Laure Adler. He was telling the journalist about a card he had previously received from a friend, saying: ‘Happy new mess’ (in French Joyeux Bordel instead of Joyeux Noël = Merry Christmas). I more and more back this vision of the world where everything is complicated but not incomprehensible, where we can be in the dark without fumbling about.

Although nowadays everything is massive and global, some room should be left for the individual dimension: At the end of the day, the world is made of people and every single person is much more than a theory, fortunately or unfortunately. I very much liked Peggy McIntosh’s approach in her paper published in the book Educating citizen for global awareness, where she identifies four phases in building global awareness. Phase I means womanless and all white. Phase II admits ‘exceptional others’. Phase III is about coming to see and to understand local and global issues of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and so on. It observes power systems and brings in issues of justice and care. But Phase III can be polarized and get arrested in victim studies. Then comes Phase IV, the phase of plural stories, plural experiences, everyone’s experience, anywhere in the world. In Phase IV everyone is a knower, everyone’s daily life is history, politics, literature, drama, economics, psychology and ecology. Within Phase IV, binary thinking is seen as too simple. These four first interactive phases point toward an eventual Phase V: a version in which the world of knowledge is redefined and reconstructed to include us all. The author considers it will take 100 to 200 years to conceive Phase V depending on which decisions we will make in the coming years. I believe we could actively be part of the building of this phase. We could teach our children and students not to be scared of ‘mess’ but rather to accept it and feel comfortable with it. Living with doubt, confusion and a ‘more disturbing’ (pluralistic, multinary) vision of things could be part of our approach to life and teaching. Art can help us with this. 

After all, it is just a matter of habit. We tend to be willing to control everything forgetting that this control-mania narrows our horizons and prevents us from ‘including’. ‘Excluding’ is indeed a form of rejection, of any kind, and rejection comes from fear. The same fear that keeps us away from “mess”. We just cannot bear the ‘non-understanding’ phase. We do not have enough space for it. A constant stepping back and moving forward, as a camera in a shooting, is needed in order to see the details without missing the overall view. Perhaps, we could teach our children and students to dig into stories with no fear, as well as to step back for a moment, every now and then, in order to grasp the global picture. As we could teach them not to be scared of the truth but, on the contrary, to actively look for it. As Bourdieu said: “People consider sociology as a sad subject matter, but I don’t agree with that. On the contrary, I think it is a ‘happy knowledge’ because it is the only one allowing us to get free of determinism”.   

All the above might call for a new and more inclusive concept of identity that I will call “transidentity”, which could go with a new wanted “transdisciplinarity”. Of course “identifying” comes from comparing with what is different, with the other, the alterity (if there was not diversity we would not even know who we are), but once we have experienced this difference and therefore become more conscious about ourselves, we can then access a broader understanding and challenge our sets.

Alterity can, for that matter, also be experienced within our own culture, when we find ourselves not being comfortable with the conformed “majority”. Majority and minority can indeed be relative concepts. We can easily find ourselves passing from a ‘majority condition’ to a ‘minority condition’.

Are we able to accept relativity? Can we deal with confusion? Can we live with mess? Can we include what is different?

I have often thought about the concept of community. In some countries and regions, the surrounding community is there to replace a lacking state and to help people in case of need. This is, in my opinion, a very positive thing but can this ‘community’ stretch enough to receive people from other countries/regions who experience the same social and economic condition and are just in the same need? Can a broader sense of “community” arise? Should the criteria of admission in this community be based on needs and not on ethnical origins? In this regards, I would like to mention a remarkable suggestion that Nel Noddings makes in her book, above mentioned, to replace the concept of ‘rights’ with the concept of ‘needs’, and to focus more on human beings and not that much on citizens.

All this is only possible if we develop more empathy. How could we make this happen? Should we introduce philosophy and ethics as mandatory subject matters in business, communication and administration schools? I have always thought that some economists, managers, politicians are able to make the decisions they make just because they have never seen hunger with their own eyes; they have never experienced directly discrimination, exclusion, injustice. Decisions are easier to make in an elegant office of a lavish building in a luxury street of a rich city. And television does not help at all with that because you just have to press a button and all those plagues become unreal. As if they never existed.

Should we strongly wish that mankind was attacked by a virus from inner space called empathy?  

E.

The reverse culture shock

There is the culture shock. And then there is the reverse culture shock. The latter is when you come back home after many years abroad and you feel like a foreigner in your home country or home town. This can be very common and I would love other people to share their experience with all of us.

It happened to me in many ways, from the very beginning when I started to travel at age 18. I went to Morocco and when I came back I felt like I wasn't the same person as before. But when I was home and people just asked me how my trip was I realized they couldn't really understand what I had experienced, perhaps they just wanted to hear a few words whereas for me an entire book wouldn't be enough to explain why I felt like I had changed so much.

It's just something... you cannot really share. Maybe that was the first time I really felt alone at home. There are the ones who leave and the ones who stay.

It continued like that after every trip I had but even more after living abroad for 8 years. That's where I started liking the German expression Die Wanderung, which is the state of wandering around without belonging anywhere. That can be dreadful. I couldn't squeeze myself enough to fit in my home town, I had seen too many things, talked to too many people, felt the world and experienced its huge diversity, how could I ever be able to share that with my people? Because, human beings feel compelled to share, right? And when they can't... well, it's painful.

Two years ago, the reverse cultural shock was the reason why I left again for another two years abroad. I couldn't bear it. And now that I've decided to come back I still feel vulnerable, like I missed many things of the local history, I'm missing some references and 8 years of my daily life are completely unknown to everybody here. I could have been kidnapped by aliens and come back, that would be the same. It's like a hole of 8 years.

And yet, I cannot say I'm not grateful for the wonderful experiences I had, I'm just striving for a brand new way to creatively find my way in this new globalized world, where more and more of us have, are having and will have this kind of experience.

Global or local? Wise or delirious?

E

Culture, Personality and Learning English

Another wonderful article sent by one of our followers:

I have been teaching English as a foreign language on the Internet for three years now.  It’s work that I love.  I get to travel the planet while sitting at my desk (sometimes in my pajamas!).  I talk with Brazilian engineers, Chinese doctors, Spanish civil servants, French job-seekers, Japanese medical representatives, Egyptian expatriates, and Mexican students, among others.  As I try to de-mystify the English language for my students, I get to hear first-hand what is going on in our small world.  The Present simple: “How is the weather today?”  and “What do you usually eat for lunch/for dinner?”  The Perfect tenses: “How has the family changed in the last 20 years?” and “Have you been personally affected by the tsunami/the revolution/the crisis?”  As a very curious city girl from the USA, now living in a small French town, I can’t think of any other job which could spare me from the collateral damage that inevitably comes with the culture shock.

In fits and starts, one faux pas at a time, I have figured out how to navigate my way in my new country.  Nothing can heighten cultural sensitivity in a curious city girl from the USA like being married into a French family which has lived in the same town for seven generations.  No hugging.  No enthusiastic waving of the hand.   Bread placed on the table, not on your dinner plate.  Hanging out with the locals, who refer to me at times with derision and at other times with pride, as l’américaine, I can really see how American I am and always will be. 

I’ve always shied away from stereotypes and generalizations, preferring instead to greet each individual as just that – an individual.  Someone it is only possible to know over time and through experience.  Yet, my own daily Franco-American experience seems to insist upon the validity of certain national characteristics.  And my daily experience as a teacher of various nationalities seems to confirm this validity.  After all, even as we each have our own remarkably unique personalities, we are all in some way or another, the product of the remarkably unique social and cultural environment in which we have been steeped.   

As if in confirmation of the link between culture and personality, I began to notice that my students interacted with me and approached their on-line lessons in nationality-specific ways. 

 How to explain the meticulous Japanese who always go above and beyond the call of duty?  Why read only one chapter when you can read the entire book, write a synopsis, and create a PowerPoint presentation?  What about all the Chinese who are hard-working students and brimming with undying love for English and English speakers?  The Brazilians who, almost without fail, treat their lessons like verbal physical training programs.  Ready.  Set.  Go!  Even the beginners speak during the entire class without stopping 40, 60, 120 minutes or more minutes.  Then there are all the Italian male students who can’t help but flirt with their teacher.  The Germans who insist that they must improve their English, but who actually speak and write better than the average American (okay, not a fair comparison).  And the Koreans who don’t know that it is possible to have fun in life, let alone while learning English?  Then there are the French who know that it is possible to have fun in life, but who haven’t made that link with learning English.  The French come to English class like most people come to the dentist: flinching, their mouths reluctantly open, but no sound coming out.

Curious girl that I am, I wonder if any other teachers have noticed any such generalizations among their students.  Surely, if student behavior can be categorized according to nationality, surely teachers must exhibit certain predictable characteristics according to the passport they carry.

What are your observations?

M.A. Chester

Limbo or mambo?

The condition F. talked about in a previous post is what my Brazilian friend calls the limbo. One day, he told me something I have not forgotten ever since: Once you leave your own country, you will always live in a limbo and never completely come back: if you stay abroad you'll miss what you have
left at home and if you go back home you'll miss what you have left in the new country.


How are we going to deal with the limbo? Can we make it more pleasant? Or could we just accept it for what it is and learn to deal with that?

Would it be better to keep the desire of leaving but never do it? Is the limbo condition better than regretting never having left? Is it better to be a happy naïve? I've been wondering  about these things for ages.

That's why in my first post I was talking about a nirvana hard to bear...

Should we just dance, dance, dance in order to forget?

What do you think? Send us your comments.


E.

The entire world in my hometown

A great news: Today we received our first sharing. Here it is:

When I was a child, I had the desire to travel far. I did not really feel rooted in my hometown, Vienna, Austria and felt like homeless. Perhaps this was because my grandparents where not from there and the family had migrated often. 


I had the vision that the world would come to us and this has actually happened in the meantime. Vienna is a multicultural city now, and I like it much because I can meet people from different countries and cultures. It was not necessary for me to travel much. But sometimes now I think of leaving my homecountry for a place where things would be easier for me to manage. But when I really have to decide my family stands out against it, and at the end of the day, I feel at home here and would feel strange in another country. 


I would be willing to take many things with me if I moved, in order to feel at home also abroad. The Internet gives me the opportunity to meet people from all nations, too, and it`s easy to connect over far distances. 


I would have never believed that one day this would be real.... Margarete

Intercultural Competence

 I have always been fascinated by the term "cultural shock". Every time I thought of it, I imagined a scene of a an Amish woman walking on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, looking at all the women in tiny bikinis. If this really happened, how would the Amish woman feel? What would she think?

So naive of me. I imagined that culture shock happening in extreme situations such as the one described above, but never with me. After a year living abroad, I learned that culture shock is a much more ordinary event, happening every day with us all. And I think it's good.

I can illustrate the phenomenon with a simple anecdote. I was in a class one day, and one of the students brought her three-week-old baby to class. She had a presentation to make, so she asked the professor to hold the baby for her while she spoke. The professor's behavior was what really amazed me.

In my country, women hold babies in a very maternal way, either talking to the baby with that "baby voice" or caressing the baby's head. The professor did nothing of that sort. While holding the baby, she concentrated all her attention to the student's presentation, as she was supposed to. I, on the other hand, could not do what I was supposed to.

I could not believe how serious and professional my professor was. I could not stop staring at her. She was holding a baby, for God's sake! I thought she was cold, terribly cold to that poor little creature who did not ask to be in a university class in a cold morning. Or was I exaggerating?

The question, then, is: what is the problem with having a cultural shock? I know the answer for that. The problem is not the cultural shock; cultural judgment is what is really problematic.

On my way home after that class, I reflected on my behavior. Who was I to keep staring at my professor during a class, judging her because she was not cuddling the baby as if women in my culture do? I learned a good lesson, then: I am going to experience lots of cultural shocks in my journey here, and they are supposed to enrich me, not to make me judge others. 


                                                                                                                    F.   

The perfect country ;-)

After living in 5 different countries and visiting almost 20, I guess I started to dream about an ideal place where I would gather all the things I liked around the world. I would call this new country Kirghisia.

This country would spend much money on research and pay professors and teachers a lot like the US does; but university would be equally accessible and free like in Italy, with no difference between Grande Ecoles (business schools) and Petites Ecoles (universities). The school system would provide support to any student who might have trouble with any kind of subject matters or topics like in Finland, and kindergarten teachers would be given high credit since they deal with the most sensitive time of our lives (again like in Finland).
In this country, natural beauty products, food and medicine would be affordable and easy to find like in France and Germany.
People would wear Italian cloths and drink Italian coffee. They would also eat Korean kimchi, Portuguese bolinhas de bacalhau, Spanish paella, Mexican tacos, Japanese sushi......... People would have a sauna at home every night like in Finland, and get a massage every day after work like in Southeast Asia. Once a year, Rio de Janeiro's Carnival would take place, and in the beginning of June, the Bulgarian Rose Festival would occur. The sea would look like the Greek sea.

Social security would be like in Northern Europe and far from the US health system. Unemployment benefits would be like in France and there would be free bicycles all over the cities so that everyone would be able to get one and then leave it back somewhere after riding. Bicycle lanes would be everywhere like in the Netherlands. Life would be fun and surprising like in Naples and people would be welcoming and peaceful like in Bali. There would be many little grocery stores instead of huge dreadful supermarkets. There would be no one dying from hunger like in Buthan and Cuba.

Architecture would look like the Italian one and parks would follow the English style. Movies wouldn't be translated but only subtitled like in Scandinavia and France.

Tap water would be free like in Canada and you would be able to return everything you bought but didn't like anymore (before using it, of course) like in the US.

Trains would be always on time like in Switzerland and cannabis would be legal like in the Netherlands.

What else? Help remind....

E

PS: This is just a joke I wanted to share with you all. Of course there is no perfect country, but when I live abroad or travel I always have fun trying to imagine which characteristics of the new country I would keep and which I would discard. Generally, I'm not talking about cultural features, but more about political and social policies.