the 10 ways to look like a local in Asia

It took me quite a long time to find something that made me smile. News websites are not full of good news . Moreover when you don’t share the same sense of humor , it’s like a Hercule’s work  to laugh .

At least I found my article on CNN . It’s about the 10 ways to look like a local in Asia .( http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/03/cnngo.look.like.asia.local/index.html)

It explains what to do or not to do when you travel in Asia countries, what is in is not written in guidebook ;-)

You will learn a way to cross the street in Indian, what not to order in sushi bar in Japan, or what have you to do to look like a local  with your girlfriend in China.

I must confess you that I didn’t really understand the Singapore paragraph : do they kill their grandparents ?   

The strangest paragraph I have read is the South Korea one: is the Korean society categorised with blood type as we do in France with astrologic signs ?

In my opinion, the funniest paragraph is about phoning in train in Japan . As I was reading it, I have thought about our public transports . Sometimes you can learn nearly everything of the private life of your neighbour while she is phoning to her close friend .

So, the only thing we have to do where we are travelling abroad is to open one’s eyes, one’s ears  and forget for a while the rules we’ve learn in our  culture .

How Peru has reduced illiteracy by half in four years

This article is about the National Mobilisation Programme for Literacy in Peru (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/01/peru-literacy-amazon-pronama-barbier)

The aim of this program is to learn to read , write and do basic calculations to the 11% of Peruvians who are illiterate, as adult or child .

In the past, many villages were too far from teachers and school ( some of them were several days away from school), so that many adults could not go to school during their childhood

This four-month courses has began in 2006 in the Andes and then has been extended to the whole country

It has been difficult to convinced adults to come to school because of many reasons. First of all, the Sendero Luminoso had left a very bad memory to indigenous people. Now they have difficulties to trust intruders. Facilitators must have been recruited to facilitate contacts between population and this program and its teachers. The second reason is that most adults say that they can’t learn any more, that’s too late, in fact they can’t say they’re ashamed .

The 2007 census said that 16% of Peruvians speak another language than Spanish . The success of this programme is in one idea : the course must begin in the dialect of the village where the school takes place .

With this program every body will be able to write a short paragraph which will allow them to be understood. Moreover at the end they will be able “to sign community agreements in their own name “.

For me this programme is the nicest way for indigenous people to become a real subject of their country , not anymore a person of second-rate.