Stupid Americans
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Stupid Americans
“Man I hope this isn’t where we’re staying because it looks shittier than the ghetto,” said one of my friends as our bus rolled up to the little town of Cegled, Hungary. Our coach shot him a glance that could have killed Medusa, which made my friend immediately wish he had never spoken. We had been making comments of this sort for the entire hour and a half bus ride, so it didn’t take long for us to realize that this must have been the town we were staying in. I felt bad because I knew that our guide could speak english and had heard all the comments and because we later figured out this was her hometown. I felt awful and extremely embarrassed of the fact that we had been bashing her town and her country, right in front of her for nearly the entire ride. In the small town of Cegled, it was a lot different than most of the cities in America because here everything is huge, new, and state of the art. In Hungary, most of the buildings are more than one hundred years old and are about to collapse. The thing is that in the US we expect everything to be the best and if it isn’t we want it changed immediately. In Hungary it’s an entirely different story; they have old buildings that are falling apart but they don’t really care about that because they are glad to even have those buildings. There, they don’t have much, but what they do have they try to take care of as best they can. Only they can’t because they don’t have the extra money lying around like we do here in America.
After five awkwardly silent minutes, we got to our hotel, which was a two-story building with a small courtyard and 16 rooms. We were split into groups of 3 and were each given a room to stay in. my group and I threw our bags into our room quickly and then we went back to the courtyard with our polo gear for our practice. As a team we ran about six blocks to the pool. The pool deck here was interesting; it had a wooden bleacher that was falling apart, the cages were covered in rust, and half of the lights on the scoreboard were out. The changing rooms were made entirely made of old tin strips that were leaning against a wall and were about three feet wide. The pool house was covered in moss and ivy, with cement that was falling apart. Their pool was filled from a nearby lake, so the water was a murky green and you couldn’t even see the bottom. We looked at each other and we all knew what everyone was thinking, “We have to swim in that?” That is one of the many reasons why everyone hates Americans, we are ignorant and don’t understand how lucky we are compared to most of the world. We are so much better off than the rest of the world; our water is clean, our government isn’t corrupt, the list goes on and on.
My family and I are currently hosting a water polo player from Holland. He’s a nice guy and we get along great. About two nights ago, we were driving home from dinner and we had stopped by Frys to get a camera battery for his camera. On our way back, he was putting it in to see if it would fit. And I, being the stupid ignorant American that I am, said, “ I think you need to charge it first.” He obviously knew that because I heard the guy at Fry’s tell him that. He jokingly said,” I’m from Holland, I’m not stupid.” I could tell he was kidding around, but he the thing was he was also right. We Americans think everyone is stupid except us, when in reality we actually are the stupid ones.
Meanwhile, two months ago in Hungary, our trip continued. We toured the city after we had finished practice in the green sludge pool, as we called it. We got back to the hotel and we all immediately went straight to the showers. I got into the bathroom and turned on the shower, instantly the room began to smell of sulfur. I had no clue where the smell was coming from but I hoped it wasn’t the shower. As I got into the shower, the smell of sulfur increased tenfold. After I finished showering I went to the sink to get a drink of water, filled up a glass and just as I was about to take a sip, I smelled that awful smell of sulfur again. I took a small sip and, yep it was sulfur. When our team gathered for dinner we talked about how much nicer the water was in the US. That is just another thing that we take for granted that many people do not have, clean tap water.
After dinner we were allowed to roam the streets for an hour. A bunch of us went out looking for something to do and we ended up finding some local kids to hang out with. The young people there were nice to us and talked to us, but the older people looked at us with disgust and clearly did not like our presence. Most of the kids are taught English in their school , so we were able to communicate pretty well through simple words and hand signals. There is another example of how we are ignorant; we force everyone else to learn our language because we are too lazy to take to time to learn any other language. Children in most countries over the world are taught English in the basic curriculum of their elementary schools now. Here we just learn English and then, when we are 12 and it is much harder to learn another language, we are given the option to learn another; but there are only two options, French and Spanish.
During the trip I didn’t really notice these small things, but looking back I now see how dumb we must have looked when we would simply expect the waitress serving us to know English so she could take our order. All of the little things we have here that we take for granted like chlorinated pools, nice houses, extra money for useless videogames and such, are unheard of in these small impoverished countries like Hungary. Even though I hate to admit it, I am one of those ignorant Americans wasting my money on useless things that don’t make a difference in my life. And to think that all that wasted money could have been used to buy some small yet important thing that we take for granted here, like shoes, for someone in those poor countries. A thing that makes me so ignorant is that I have gone this entire day, until right now while I am fixing up this essay, with out realizing that it was September 11. Less than ten years ago this day, one of the most tragic things to happen to our country to happen in the past century, and somehow it completely skipped my mind. That is truly sad.