During this past week, I have had the chance to experience the views of the family with whom I now live and to see how they compare with my previous host. The pandemic is something we are still dealing with every day in Argentina. We are still living in a national quarantine, which affects our daily lives. At my previous house, my host listened to the news all day and wanted to talk about it with me. I try to only spend fifteen minutes a day looking at the news before I start working, so this was hard for me. In my current house, I share a similar perspective to my hosts. We all just do our best to adapt to life in a new normal. If the quarantine comes up, we can have a healthy conversation about it, but we also talk about homework, T.V. shows we’re watching, and recipes we want to cook.
I've learned two things from both of my living experiences. First, I need to think about my own perspective of this pandemic. I have a college degree in public health science. Over the four years I spent in college, I took classes where we studied historical epidemics, the physiology of diseases and how to coordinate public health responses to the crisis. All of this knowledge that I have accumulated is helping me approach my current situation differently than someone who studied economics, for example, or someone who started working right after high school. Everyone has a different perspective and I need to be aware of this as we communicate. Second, even within a city or culture, people can have very different approaches. Learning about other people’s perspectives can expand your own world view and positively impact the way you interact with other people every day.
