Name: Wang, Hsueh-mei
School: University of Strathclyde

First image of studying in UK
---- Globalization, I smell, I enjoy, I do it!!

I haven't been so close to black people before. Actually, I live with a black woman now. Jennifer, my first black friend, from Barbados, completely changes the image of black people I had before. She cleans everything (I thought black people don't like cleanness). She wipes the table after each meal (She can't afford any crumbs on the table). When the litterbin is almost full, everyone thinks it should load more garbage (everyone is patient at that time); she is always the first person of 6 flat mates to dump it. One night, my Egyptian flat mate wore Egyptian traditional black suit, which covers the whole body with beautiful jewels on the kerchief and you can see only her big eyes. Everyone praised her costume, but Jennifer said unhappily "garbage men! They invented this kind of clothing to cover beautiful women!" How modern and feminist she is. Sometimes Black people are more modern than us, not like the movies say or news reports.

If I didn't come to Britain for studying, maybe I wouldn't correct some wrong images ever. This is just one gift I have got in the UK. The most exciting thing is our classmates and lectures. There are 19 nationalities between 50 classmates. We really came from all over the world, America, Europe, Asia, and Africa; some of the countries I've never heard of before and I have to look for them in the map to know their locations. We have many opportunities to understand different cultures from each other and share experience from different backgrounds.

My major is tourism. Our lectures often take many examples from different countries. I am surprised that some developing countries have developed international tourism for several decades and get huge economic benefits. Like Kenya and Uganda in Africa, they develop ecotourism devoted to environmental protection. They may have much more experience than Taiwan in terms of environmental protection. Some European countries have developed tourism over one hundred years. I thought we should copy the model of these developed countries to develop tourism in Taiwan, however, they have found tourism brought some negative impacts to them recently. What we have to be careful is to avoid these negative impacts when we develop our tourism industry.

Our lectures also introduce the functions of international organizations in tourism industry and students can get latest information on these organizations in library. To Taiwanese people, international organizations may be just a political arena; they accept or reject Taiwan to be their member. In fact, these organizations, such as UNESCO (United Nations Education Science Culture Organization) and European Community, have achieved many impossible missions to help developing countries to develop tourism, to save damaged human heritages and destroyed historic towns.

Globalization is a popular word, however it is not easy to feel the atmosphere of globalization in Taiwan. Now I am studying in Glasgow, an international city in Scotland. I watch BBC news program; I concern every event in the world, because each news may relate to my friends. I read English and American textbooks and look for information of different countries for my essays; I have group meeting with Japanese, Hong Kong, Iranian classmates later. My Egyptian friend invites me to have a big dinner after sunset, because now is Ramadan to Muslims; they cannot eat and drink anything until sunset. After that, we will go to club to enjoy traditional Scottish Ceilidh dance. In the future, I may promote Taiwan to international tourists. The Millennium opens a new era to human beings, while I create an opportunity to be a global person in 2000. Globalization, I smell, I enjoy, and I do it!!