Category — RRoss

For the past two summers, I have been invited to go on a wilderness trip with nine other Brooklyn boys to Kennicott, Alaska. It’s run by a New York City lawyer who raises money by holding fundraisers in order to cover the costs. It is a free trip for me and all the other boys involved. The purpose of the trip is to take city kids and take them out of their comfort zone to the outdoor lifestyle, with no phones, TV, iPod, or computers.

The trip itself is an unbelievable experience. We get the privilege to go ice climbing on an Alaskan glacier, hike to the peak of a mountain, and go rafting down Alaska’s Chitina River for a few days. But one thing you realize when you go on an adventure like this is the cultural differences between Brooklyn boys and Alaska natives. There are things I experience there that I would never see while home in New York. The location aspect is a huge transition. While in Alaska, we stayed for a night in a man named Jurgen’s cabin. Just like many of the people in Alaska, he built his home himself and lives pretty secluded. To eat, he needs to make sure he’s always catching fish or hunting other animals. That’s the only way he can get his food. Either that, or he has to travel 8 hours by car back to the city of Alaska in Anchorage to get groceries. So that was a bit strange for me. I’m used to walking to the deli on the corner of my block to get a sandwich and some chips. At his house, I was eating salmon out of a jar and filling a water bottle outside in a stream by his cabin. I guess you can say we’re spoiled in a way living in the city, having everything we need right next to us, with practically no work involved to get it. In Alaska, they work for the little things that we aren’t accustomed to.

A cultural difference that I happened to love in Alaska is that everyone is extremely friendly whether they know you or not. I understand that there aren’t as many people in Alaska so maybe it’s a little easier to be friendly but it’s still a very warm feeling. In Kennicott, people will walk up to our group of ten kids and ask about us and our story. It’s nice to be acknowledged. Another aspect of Kennicott that I loved is that every Friday, the communities of Kennicott and McCarthy (About 3 miles from Kennicott) get together and have a big softball game. It’s a really friendly game that anyone can come and play and it just gives you a sense of unity and friendship. Every Friday, 100 or so people come together and have fun with one another on the field and in town. It just amazes me how these people interact with one another and are welcoming to every person that visits their town. It’s not like that in Brooklyn. If someone even said, “Hi” to you on the street, you’d probably look at them as if they were crazy. Those are the experiences in Alaska that I’ll miss the most. They welcome you there as if you’re family. It’s an incredible, yet rare experience to have and I’m glad I got the privilege to spend time with those people. I’ve learned a lot by going by going to Alaska the past two years and it’s something I’ll never forget because it gives me knowledge of the different cultures and lifestyles that we have in America. I have gained knowledge past the boundaries of Brooklyn and New York City.

Cultural encounters aren’t too hard to come by living in Brooklyn. I live in Sunset Park, a predominantly Spanish and Chinese neighborhood sandwiched between Bay Ridge, a predominantly Arab area, and Park Slope, a predominantly white area. I am white myself, being that I am nearly one hundred percent Irish, with a little Scottish thrown in. Living in a multi-cultural neighborhood my whole life, I see cultural encounters all the time. An encounter I’ve experienced just the other day is when I was hanging out with two friends of mine. One is my next-door neighbor, Nicole, and the other was a friend Dana. The other day they dragged me to the nail salon with them on the corner of my block. This nail salon is owned by a Chinese woman and there are only Chinese workers in there. But if you walk in, you see these Chinese ladies speaking Chinese to customers who speak Chinese, Spanish to customers that speak Spanish, and English to customers that speak English. There is no language barrier. They’ve adapted to the cultures around them and adjust to these cultures to make sure they can communicate in the easiest and most effective way possible. These women in this salon didn’t limit themselves to one culture and language. They realized that the best way to get their message across and be heard was to accept other languages and become strong, multicultural people.

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