United States and Ancient Rome

One day, some years ago, I met a man who lives here in Santos City and, because he´s American, he teaches English with a much greater authority than any Brazilian who does the same. During our conversation, he told me: "If I had enough money to take my students to the United States, I´d never take them to Disney World because it isn´t United States". He said to me that he has nothing against Disney World and that he even visited it, but, by the other side, he said one thing that, although it´s obvious, most part of Brazilians can´t understand: a theme park is not a true representation of a country´s reality. Therefore, this American told me that, if he had enough money, he would take his students to know the United States for real, outside any theme park.

A theme park is, by definition, a funny and fantastic environment, a joke place that can´t be used as a reference to judge the city or even the country in which it´s located.

Imagine this situation: a man who lived in the time of Ancient Rome and who had never been in Rome, one day visited the city and went straight to the Coliseum. The impression that he would have of Rome and the Empire as a whole would be the worst as possible. If this man had the same mentality of most Brazilians, he would certainly come back to his village saying: "There in Rome, the followers of a pursuited sect called Christianism are driven to the lions, under applauses and other praises of the people and the senators; warriors fight ´till the death by the sword and some times even riding horses or chariots! Rome is a wild land!" However, this man simply didn´t know that the Coliseum was a kind of primitive theme park that, despite its unquestionable wildness, never could be used as a true representation of the city or the Empire in which it was located.

Got it?