Seoul, Bangkok, Vienna, São Paulo — for many Bay Area residents, summer vacation means more than silencing morning alarms and shelving heavy textbooks. It means a window for travel. Whether listening to street music in Havana or conversing with vendors in Tsukiji Outer Market, these glimpses of life abroad reveal how shared identities across the world contrast with the cultural variety of the Bay Area, one of the country’s most diverse regions according to the Bay Area Equity Atlas.

Silicon Valley is a fusion of cultures, its streets lined with a kaleidoscope of restaurants and churches, startups and local markets. 

However, when history teacher Carol Green traveled to Italy for the first time this summer, she noticed how this variety contributed to feelings of individualism.

“In our Bay Area bubble, we have a huge diversity of people, food, customs and experiences, but because of that, we don’t get fully immersed in one culture,” Green said. “Even in terms of meal time, Italians don’t eat dinner until 8 or 9 p.m. — that’s very much the culture there. But in the Bay Area, if you ask everyone around here, ‘What time do you eat dinner?’ everyone has a different time.” 

This concept of shared norms within a region extends beyond daily habits to cultural values in a way that is often absent in the Bay. Junior Colin Li, who spent two months interning at China Medical University in Taiwan, observed how approachable people were compared to his experiences back home. 

“When I think of the Bay Area people, sometimes it feels like they’re more uptight, but I didn’t see much of that in Taiwan,” Colin said. “I gained a deeper understanding of another culture that I wouldn’t have gotten at a U.S. internship.”

Both Green’s and Colin’s experiences point to a broader truth: leaving home not only offers new adventures, but also casts fresh perspectives on familiar surroundings. A 2024 study by Sahrdaya College in India found that travel can significantly influence adolescents’ overall life satisfaction, concluding that experience in foreign culture improves adaptability and emotional intelligence.

When Senior S Wang spent six weeks in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as part of the National Security Language Initiative for Youth summer program, she found herself embracing new challenges that pushed her out of her comfort zone. Living with a host family while learning Indonesian, she reflected on the stark adjustment of her new living arrangement from the comfort of Bay Area life. 

“It was a very different type of life living in the tropics near the equator,” S said. “You have to learn how to deal with the humidity, drinking lots of water, squat toilets, wet bathrooms, mosquitoes and ants.”

S also noticed how even within a single country, each region maintained distinct cultural variations, creating a sense of local identity.

“Indonesia is a very regional country in that each region has slightly different traditions, dances and foods,” S said. “The soto you try in Yogyakarta is supposedly very different from soto in other places, and there will be desserts or chips that you could only find in one city versus others. That was shocking to me because where we live, everything is available everywhere.”

For Green, traveling to areas with more cohesive customs revealed the gaps in her own community. She highlighted that the Bay Area’s unique cultural diversity can come at the expense of shared practices that foster social connection.

“I feel like we are missing the unified identity, and I feel sad about that because it does provide community,” Green said. “In the Bay Area, we don’t have the same sense of community I was seeing in other parts of the world. In places like South Korea, that idea was very big — you act on behalf of your community. We don’t have a collective identity, which decreases the sense of camaraderie with everyone that’s around you.”

Still, Green emphasized the benefits of the Bay Area’s diversity, believing that the relationships and exposure to multiple traditions can provide a similar cultural understanding as travel. By stepping outside familiar settings, whether crossing national borders or connecting with someone from a different background, people can gain a better understanding of both themselves and the world around them.

“One thing we talk about in my classes is that even though we’re all different, we do have common values,” Green said. “Trying to find that in people is important. When I was traveling in Italy, I was still finding commonalities with people who were very different than me. Because we don’t have that specific common identity in the Bay Area, we need to look harder to find the commonalities, but I do believe we can find it.