But anyway, upon seeing the first episode of the current season, I am reminded at why I like this show. Because it showcases the amazing characteristics of various things.
First, the excitement. I always get excited at the thought of travel. There are these 11 teams, starting from Los Angeles, and they find out that they are heading to Santiago de Chile. Wow. To fly like that halfway around the planet into a different hemisphere, I suppose the excitement in flying will always be with me, no matter how often I do the route. It just has something to do with experiencing something that is not in the ordinary. Heck, I am flying back to Manila in a couple of months, and I am getting excited, partly because this is the first time I am flying via Alaska!
Second, the amazing stupidity of some Americans. I always enjoy seeing the faux pas and the blunders of the contestants. So, one contestant apparently was in a beauty pageant, and she was asked why 20 percent of Americans cannot even point where in a globe the United States is, and her answer was so idiotic. Wow. Another team figured that since they were going to Chile, they needed to change money, but they changed it to Brazilian money, not Chilean! Another team decided to just barge in a house and trespass and paint a wall when they were instructed to paint an outside wall, thus not following directions. What were these people thinking? It seems that their brains are turned off. It's as if they don't realize that there is a whole world outside their backyard!
In a way, I find it almost offensive that some people assume that the things they take as normal should also hold for a foreign country. Assuming that American dollars would be valid for Chile, assuming that Andale! Andale! would be comprehensible in Chile, assuming that things would always be the same in a foreign country, when the correct assumption to make is that things would be by default different in a foreign country. I find it difficult to grasp why people, Americans especially, make that assumption. When I travel to a foreign country, I know that that country would have its own currency, I know that that country would have a language of its own, and in fact, I would be surprised that my norm actually holds in a foreign country, such as when I first learned that Ecuador uses the American dollar as its own currency!
In any case, I love this show. I love the sights, and it gives me ideas on where to head to next when I find the time to traipse the world yet again.
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