Week 1, A World of Difference

In response to this week's class, I would like to show a few more examples that I have found recently to stress the point from my previous blog post(miscommunication between cultures). Here is a well-known photo of George Bush and Prince Abdullah of Saudia Arabia. They are holding hands in public, obviously not an American tradition as we would assume something different, yet if we were to travel to Saudi Arabia, this is a form of respect. Is this something that we can understand at all? Can we comprehend why two men are holding hands if they are not homosexual?

For a very simple example, think about the food that we have here in the U.S., food that seems ordinary such as chocolate chips, string cheese, baking powder, plain Hershey chocolate bars.... think about every-day use of these words plus others such as 'bake,' 'mailbox,' 'cell-phone plan,' and these are just some of them. Now think about language and how often we use these words and imagine you are in a place where these items do not exist! Doesn't the communication become somewhat difficult even with seemingly unimportant items, when you cannot describe how we get our mail, how we bake chocolate chip cookes, eat ice cream with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, do not all have pre-paid cell phone plans, and have internet in our houses and therefore know what UTube is? It is not easy to explain these basic differences and I am only listing examples from the American side.

As for the class, I was very surprised by the outcome of our first discussion. I thought that it went far deeper than I was expecting or than anyone else was expecting. I hope that we can express our opinions and facts, preferably opinions rooted in fact or theory, and that there will be no negative impact on our group outside of class. This week's debate as I think it should be deemed, sparked an interesting outcome of emotion, personal experience, and practical reasoning. We are all from unique parts of this country and others and therefore have our own history, assumptions, and culture to share with each other.