Alberto Knows Best

I was reading fellow chronicle staff member Jessica Sommerville's blog and she brought up a great point in her most recent blog entitled "Bailando."  To basically sum up her entire post in one sentence, she believes American's need to learn more about different cultures of the world.
This school year my family is hosting a boy from Spain named Alberto.  He is an average junior here at MHS, but something sets him apart from all the other dreary faces walking the halls.  As soon as Alberto walked off the eight hour plane ride that took him across the vast Atlantic, I could not help but think to myself that I would need to explain every little American aspect of his new life to him. The first few days of school approached, and I felt it was my duty to teach him the countless slang words teenagers use at school.  'Dude, swag, bro, and selfies' were all words I assumed were foreign to him, but I was totally wrong. 
"Do you know what a 'dude' is"? I would ask.
His face stared back at me like I was the one who had just walked off that plane.
"Duh," he said and continued watching The Big Bang Theory.
"Well...what about 'swag'?"
"Duh," he said again, irritation etched across his face.
I was the one who left that conversation feeling like I had learned something new.  Alberto was just as cultured about popular American trends as I was, yet he did it across an entire ocean.  If he asked me about some basic Spanish trends...well then Google would become my best friend.  Maybe I need to learn more Spanish or find out what's new in Spain.  Or maybe we all need to expand our cultural knowledge. 

Alberto flew across the Atlantic into a world he is actually quite familiar with.