One thing you've learned

I've never done online classes with students outside of senegal and with these classes with pounahou students one of the things I learned is that sharing experience at the international level is very important because it allows you to go out of your area and discover the culture and what makes the difference with other countries. In the future I will not hesitate to sign up for other courses to discover more things.

Before the sustainability conversations, I didn't know much about Hawaii and the way people live. Everything I knew about this State, I learned it on television from the shows. But I realized that they only showed us what they wanted us to see. So I just had stereotypes about Hawaii. These classes taught me a lot about Hawaii, but most of all, they taught me not to judge something until I actually know it. We tend to rely on what we hear to create caricatured representations without even having our own opinion. Now, I will no longer base myself on preconceived ideas and I will research everything that intrigues me before making hasty judgements. That's one thing I've learned from these conversations about sustainability that has made me see things differently.

Prior to these conversations, I knew almost nothing about Senegal and the culture they had there. It was so interesting to be able to talk to everybody and learn about their way of life and how the sustainability themes affected them. What I especially loved, however, was when we would find so many similarities between our cultures in Senegal and Hawaii. It made me feel much more connected to everyone which I didn't think was possible considering how far away we are from each other. This made me realize how our differences can maybe cloud our judgement, but if we took the time to listen and look deeper under the surface, we would see how alike and connected everyone around the world is.

One thing that I learned is how widespread of an idea sustainability actually is. I always knew the idea of environmental sustainability, but never considered that sustainability applies to so many different ideas and parts of life. The best definition that I found of sustainability is this: "sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." Based on this concept, one thing that I will take from this class is the idea of cultural sustainability, as in teaching those around me customs that I want to continue in our world. But also, being mindful of other people's traditions and being open minded about learning new traditions to add to my repertoire.

Talking on these WebEx calls every week has been a great experience. These calls have allowed me to gain a greater insight into some sustainability and cultural aspects in Senegal. It has been very interesting to compare life here in Hawaii to life in Senegal. These comparisons have enabled me to gain a greater perspective of sustainability around the world. One specific thing that I have learned from our sustainability conversations that I can apply to my own personal life moving forward is the issue of plastic pollution. Plastic pollution is huge in Hawaii, especially pollution in our waters, but it was interesting to hear that in Senegal plastic bottles are thrown on the ground, much like how cigarettes are thrown on the ground here in Hawaii. Hearing about this made me more aware about how plastic pollution is a worldwide problem, and now I will make a more conscious effort to limit my plastic consumption.

I've learned a pretty good amount about Senegal but the one thing that I enjoyed learning about was their culture. It was great to learn about the similarities and differences Senegal's culture was compared to Hawaii's. Senegal's culture surrounds the aspect of being really close with family which I really appreciate. From eating dinners with each other to spending at least 2-3 minutes just greeting each other. Religion is another way to stay connected to others in Senegal. Even calling someone by their nickname is a sign of respect which I liked. Also I really enjoy that they are a French speaking country because French is such a beautiful language. Overall I've learned a great amount of things about Senegal I just wish we got to travel there.

I learned that single use plastic is a prominent issue around the world. Hawaii has a culture where most people care for the environment and try to be sustainable, but there is always more that we can do. I learned to reduce my plastic waste by using reusable bags and water bottles. I also reuse large plastic bottle and store them in my car with water so that I can rinse my feet off after going surfing.

One thing I learned from our sustainability conversations is how similar issues can take different shapes across the world. For example, the issues of homelessness in Hawaii is very different than it is in Senegal. In Hawaii, homelessness is caused by addiction, mental health, and high costs of living and often affects adults, while in Senegal, homelessness affects mostly children who are often abandoned by their parents or mentors. Seeing this stark difference in how homelessness exists in these two places gave me a new perspective, and will affect how I think about worldwide issues in the future. There is not one uniform solution for issues that exist around the world, and this is an important thing to keep in mind as we face problems in the future (climate change, etc.)

Through our sustainability conversations, I learned a lot about Senegalese culture and what everyone there goes through. It destroyed a lot of preconceived notions that I've had about Africa through its media portrayal and gave me a much better understanding of the world outside of the US. I've never really been outside of the US, and these conversations helped to break down the borders and showed me our underlying similarities.

Growing up in Hawaii, littering is groomed to be one of the worst offenses. Whenever I see trash on the ground I pick it up and place it in the nearest trashcan. I thought it was very interesting to hear about how serious the plastic pollution problem is in Senegal. To hear that people just throw their trash wherever is frankly scary to me. This class has allowed us to communicate and connect across the world and hear each others problems. With this communication, we can share solutions to better the issues. I love to travel and explore new countries and embrace different cultures. So, we can learn from each other to better the environment.

One thing I learned from our environmental sustainability conversation this last week was that the current pandemic has had both positive and negative effects on our planet. I thought this was an important connection that we made in our discussion because it shows that you have to look at an issue in its entirety to fully understand what sort of effects it has on the world around it. I can apply this to my personal life moving forward, because it has made me aware of how much single-use plastic is used every time we eat out now-a-days, and so I will be more mindful of this and try to restrict the amount of times I eat out.

Before this course I knew nothing about Senegal besides where it was located and what I was going to learn once I got there. However, after having our sustainability conversations, I can say that my knowledge on life in a place very different from my home has expanded, and that I can further appreciate and understand traditions or practices that are foreign to me because I had the opportunity to practice that skill over the past 6 weeks. I'm grateful that I can take my, although very limited, newfound knowledge about life in Senegal and Africa and use it to better understand other people I meet in the future.

The most important thing I have learned is that even if two people live on the opposite sides of the earth, they can still be really similar. Even with all the differences between my culture and that of the Senegalese students, I also noticed just as many similarities. For example, both of our nations put a large emphasis on getting a higher education and we both have a big problem with homelessness. Because of this, from now on whenever I meet a new person, no matter how different they may seem to me, I will always acknowledge that we have more similarities between us that I might see. This will hopefully allow me to keep an open mind and not judge people too quickly.

I knew very little about Senegal coming into this course. However, talking with the Senegalese students has been eye-opening. I would have never thought that a place so far away from Hawaii could have so many similarities with it. The similarities between our two homes included everything from our sense of family and community to wanting to protect the environment. However, there were also some differences that were interesting to learn about. Before this class, I had a lot of assumptions about Africa because I have never been to the continent and because of all the stories I'd heard and what people had told me. However, from what I heard in class, most of these assumptions were very far from the truth. I think the biggest takeaway from me was to not be so quick to judge, especially when it comes to things you know so little about.

One thing I learned from our sustainability conversations that I can apply to my own personal life moving forward is how different every culture is and yet the problems we struggle with are often very similar. Prior to this course my knowledge about Senegal was extremely limited, so it was very interesting to learn about importance of family and the common eating practices. One thing that definitely stuck out to me from this course was the shared problems between Hawaii and Senegal with both struggling with pollution, quality education and homelessness, but in different ways. I think that from these observations I learned the importance of working with different countries in order to try to solve the shared problems.

These last weeks of exchange on Sustainability have been an enriching experience in which I have learned a lot. What struck me most was that despite the distance between our two countries, we had more in common than I thought in a lot of areas. Our sustainability conversations made me conscious of the importance of sharing one's culture, lifestyle and beliefs because not only it helps to be more open-minded and to acquire more knowledge but also to develop my curiosity in discovering new cultures, learning new things, meeting new people and making life-long relationships which I believe to help me moving forward in my personal life.

I think the most important thing I learnt from our discussion is the importance of not judging other cultures we don’t really know. I had so many preconceived ideas out Hawaii so that I finally forgot that it’s first a place where people live in a society. For me, it was just meaning a place where everybody want to go for holidays. But by talking to you, I realized that it were far more than that; that there are some people who live there, go to school, work just as I do. It was beautiful too to see that we have many things in common, especially the place family have in our every day’s life. I’m really happy to have take part in these classe and to know all of you.

Through our sustainability conversations, I was able to learn about the similarities between Senegal and Hawaii especially in the types of problems we face like homelessness and plastic pollution. Though we have different causes/solutions to these problems it is important to learn and understand each other’s ideas in order to get a more informed and educated perspective and use that to solve our problems. This helped me to realize that there isn’t always one solution for everything and if more people were to come together to solve a common goal/issue we would be able to do more then we ever could alone.

With our sustainability conversations, I've learned more about Hawaii's life and I found a lot of similarities between us. The high cost of housing is so frequent in our city centers but also, I really liked the sense of family they developed. Their love of nature made the concepts of recycling and environmental protection very quickly assimilated and it was with great abnegation that they arrived there. Which means that despite the process being long, we too succeed in making our peers aware and pushing them to take more care of their environment.

These sustainability conversations have taught me about how environmental concerns differ from culture to culture; Hawaii and Senegal both have their own unique sets of environmental issues that are heavily shaped by culture/people/surroundings. The best solution to problems in Hawaii and Senegal are therefore very different. For example, sustainable farming in Senegal looks very different from sustainable farming in Hawaii due to our drastically different population sizes, economic demands/demand for crops, environment, etc. Hawaii and Senegal also share a lot of similarities in our environmental problems. For example, all countries struggle with a common theme of plastic (albeit in slightly different ways).

This experience has helped me to understand natives when they talk.It wasn’t something easy for me before!Usually when I watch videos in english I need subtitles but now thanks to these courses and mainly Mr Hamilton (because he speaks quickly !) I barely need them.I also learned a lot about hawaiin culture and I have noticed a few similarities between our two cultures. It was a real pleasure to learn so much about a country so far away.

Hi everyone I had never done online courses with students from another country before. It's a very first experience. Concerning conversation, I learned to give my ideas without being afraid because we all know that it is not easy to be fluent in a language different from yours. Apart from that, these classes allowed me to discover more about Hawaii and to see it from a different perspective. I used to think that it was just a place for holidays, the good life... but now I realize that this is not really the case. And that there are actually people who lead normal lives there.

Before these substainibility conversations I didn't take waste into account because I used to see it everywhere but we also used to see people throwing garbage on the street and so the one thing I learned from our conversations about sustainability that I can apply to my own personal life to move forward is recycling. Because we have to protect the earth, we have no right to pollute because then it will backfire because we're the ones who lived there. So we can raise awareness by word of mouth or through social networks, create associations or even, like the computer specialist that I am, create an application that will raise awareness so that people recycle waste.

Before we met I knew almost nothing about Senegal. One of the biggest takeaways that I got from our talks was the importance of greetings in Senegal. I will apply this to my own life by saying hi to everyone I know and trying to have conversations with them so we can get to know each other better.

Thé one thing I've learned duri'g thèse classes is that Hawaii is not as we use to see it in the moovies . And I didn't even though that Hawaii what faicing some housing problems. I really though that the hawaian were just some tribes and I realized that Hawaii is so more than what I expected it to be . Another thing I realy like is about the importance of the family at Hawaii , the diversity of the origins . And I was really happy to learn thé leraning of "Halowa ". We've learned so much together !

A while ago I didn’t know that Hawaii belonged to the United States. points to remember from our discussions was the importance of greetings to Senegal. Say these online courses g learned the mythology and culture of hawaii you made me discover a new world and for that I thank you.