in the Seoul airport

I am sitting in front of a large flatscreen television outside my gate in the Seoul-Incheon Intl Airport, half-watching a program in which the camera is following a poodle as it noses around a garish pink plastic dollhouse. The poodle climbs in the bed, then back out, shakes its back, sticks its nose under the doll table, sniffs the doll oven, licks the doll faucet, wags its tail . . .

I am half asleep from a long plane ride, so perhaps this show is more captivating than it otherwise would be. Occasionally the camera pans out and you realize you're actually watching an audience of people watching big screens of the poodle show. So I'm watching people watching a poodle in a dollhouse. They are all laughing. Occasionally the camera focuses on someone who's laughing especially hard; right now it is an elderly woman who clutches the arm of the man next to her as her face creases in uncontrollable laughter.

Why am I writing about this television show? I suppose because it is so thoroughly Other. I have been thinking about the culture I departed this morning in Washington, and the culture to which I'll be traveling shortly (Vietnam), about which I know very little.

A few images from Washington also stand out in my mind as equally, thoroughly Other (to most of the world, at least). On Friday, for example, I noticed a large advertisement in the metro station (Washington public transit) with a large photo of a handsome man smiling in a business suit, over whom were the words, "You've worked hard to get where you are, so why should you settle for an AIDS treatment that's twice a day?" I was still thinking about the bizarre logic behind this ad when I stopped into the office supply store. At the very front of the store, prominently displayed, was a rack of software for creating your own divorce paperwork and child custody paperwork.

I mention these things because I think they speak to cultural assumptions and cultural differences. There are some pretty significant assumptions that underlie the AIDS treatment ad (entitlement, privelege,  individualism, modern medicine, and rational/scientific worldview come to mind) . . . and the prominent display of divorce settlement software in an office supply store . . . and this poodle show in front of me.

The comparison between these cultural snapshots isn't parallel, and i don't mean it to be. I just offer them to demonstrate the reality that there are some significant cultural differences when one leaves the wealthy and individualistic U.S. for pretty much anywhere else in the world.

But this isn't news. We all know cultural differences exist. I suppose the challenge I'm wrestling with is how I can show care and respect for people I don't fully understand? How do I know that my attempt to honor them actually does? This is what I'm thinking about before I board my plane for Hanoi.