A mirror is a good thing. Be hard to get through the day without one or two – although spending time away from a mirror for a few days at a time is a good exercise.

A mirror's only job is to reflect. Their use comes from what you do about that reflected image.

I saw a mirror of a different kind the other day. What I saw reflected was both interesting and enlightening.

I had the chance to interview three young ladies, each an exchange student from Europe. Two from different cities in Russia and the third from Finland.

Each was particularly taken with the outgoing way they've been treated by their fellow students. How they've been greeted by an endless sea of smiles. How strangers stop and tell them how glad they are to have met. How total strangers earnestly ask `How are you?'

``In Russia, people don't do that,'' Sasha told me. ``I kept asking myself if these people were really interested in who I am and how I am. I am sure they are not, but they seem to be.''

She's correct in both assumptions. We're very good at asking how the people we meet are, and I think we've come to take that question for granted. It's our most familiar greeting, in its many forms. How are you? How do? But we get annoyed when, after asking how someone is, they stop and tell us. Anything beyond `fine, thanks' is considered rude. And that's a shame.

One of the interesting things I heard again from these three young ladies had to do with the protective way we create personal space. Each had been given an orientation class, conducted by Americans. They explained that, in the United States, you must be aware of a person's personal space. You can't get too close to people without making them uncomfortable. In Europe that space is considerably smaller than it is here, and they had to be aware of that.

That makes an interesting contrast to our open-sounding way of greeting people. `Hi! Tell me about yourself, just don't get too close' is the message. No wonder we leave people from other countries a bit confused.

More soon.