I understand. I revised it using your recommendations, but I may need to revise it some more to cut it up to 500 palavras. Does my second draft sound better? How do American politics affect the American population? This was a difficult question asked by a Turkish college student while I chewed away at my Adana kebap late at night outside a restaurant in Izmir. I almost choked on a grilled tomato; I seemed to have forgotten its skin was covered in charcoal and that six seeds of the biber were latched on to my throat. The only thing I could wash it down with was Ayran, but the salty yogurt taste left me gulping Coca- Cola instead. What could I tell her? I am a liberal thinking New Yorker, and around me are Texans, New Mexicans, Arizonians, Californians and a whole bunch of others from New Jersey, upstate New York and Mary is the only one from Vermont. Though she directed the question to me, I was very glad that the Americans surrounding me all came from varying backgrounds so that her question could be answered better. However, I think the difference of our answers gave her a broader perspective of what America was like in general--a giant pool of differing and sometimes clashing opinions and ideas. We spoke of the liberals, the conservatives, the Bible Belt, the issue of immigration in Arizona, and how sectionalism in the United States is highly influenced by geographic region as well as by personal beliefs. When I answered I was very wary, taking into account the unknown opinions of others and trying to sound diplomatic while still ascertaining my beliefs and trying to include those which I knew were not my own. To my surprise, many of us agreed on our political views. Others confessed that their geographic location had such a great impact on how they viewed the world that getting to know American students across the States made them more knowledgeable about their own country than the one we came to visit. Amen to that realization. “Wow!” and “Really?” were the words we heard the most across this discussion, and most of these "wows" were exhaled by American students rather than the group of young Turks, who sat with their mouths agape. Another thing not as clearly seen through American eyes until outside of the country is how individualistic we are as a society. The question of political views is what helped me see this, in Turkey different factions may exist but it all goes down to what the populations thinks is best for all the rest. In the States, the welfare of one person is what motivates the success or interest of such in others, after all how many people study hard to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs? Millions. In a collective society such as the Turkish one, their mild secularism and moderately Westernized cities are the closest thing they have to similitude to America. In Turkish society, there is no concept of private space, everything is public space. My family in Bursa never let me go anywhere by myself, and we always linked arms to walk from street to street, no matter how hot and sweaty we were. I hardly ever saw one person walking by himself; two people together seemed to be the cutoff. Very few homeless people are found in Turkey because of this, no family would ever let one of their own stray from their embracing wings of support and familiarity. My host uncle was super tired after coming home from the farm at midnight yet the women were still chatting up a storm in the house, so he didn’t retire to bed, he just excused himself and brought us a tub of ice-cream from the store an hour later. I asked my mother if we could go since my cousins would be leaving to Izmir in just a few hours. Here I was doing the same thing, looking out for family instead of my own desire to keep talking. Embracing differences is what diversity is all about. Diversity leads to global perspective, and global perspective leads to understanding of humanity. A person does not really know what he truly believes in, if other’s opinions, motivations, and thoughts do not trigger that belief. We understand ourselves in the presence of others, because the collective difference of all is what makes us individuals-- American or not.