Culture

SECTION 1

Culture is different customs, art, and beliefs that a group of people practice and believe in. It can be easy, depending on who a person is talking to to define culture. Just explaining what a person does in a culture is easy. getting the person to understand why they do something is a whole other story. 

The PPT describes US culture pretty well, I believe. Some things that I agree with is on one slide there is a picture of a soda on the blue and a picture of tea on the red. Above it says how this is how we deal with sickness. I believe in US culture that when we are sick, we like to think that Ginger ale is what is going to help to make our stomachs feel better. I have never lived in China, but i believe that Chinese men and women believe that tea will help their stomach. Another thing that I thought that i agreed with was the being on time slide. In Western culture normally being on time means being there at the exact time they want you to be there. Normally it is because people are in a rush to get certain places. I feel like in Chinese culture that things are done at a more leisurely pace. 

If I had to describe US culture I would say that we are not very relaxed by any means. Everything is very cut and dry. You must be in a certain place at a certain time. Your day must be packed to the limit. You must hang out with friends otherwise you are depressed. The US culture does not give much space for relaxation. Another thing is that people in America are big on hand shaking and being friendly in my opinion. 

SECTION 2: 

We may use our memory in order to try and understand a foreign situation because for Americans, we seem to always want to have an answer to things. It also would make it easier on ourselves, if we felt we understood a culture enough. 

When I was first coming to sturgis as a freshman is when i had to use my memory of what is familiar because Sturgis was completely unfamiliar. 1) I had been going to school at a k - 8 for my whole life, so i had never changed schools and 2) It was a new school in a whole other town from where I was from with all new people. I had to think about different things like teachers and going into a classroom and wondering about if I would know anyone well in my class. 

Our use of memory to know something is not completely reliable because many times people remember things differently. Also when we believe that something will be bad because that was how we remembered it, that was not always the case. Many times our memory can serve us wrong in this sense. This could also be seen as a limitation. 

SECTION 3: 

we can use our imagination to understand and appreciate other cultures by imagining what it would be like to be in a foreign place where we may not understand the language and what people normally do. If we look up online how things are done, we can normally learn to adapt to different situations and such. adaption is a large key in learning about another persons culture. But when looking at another culture, you cannot forget about your own culture because there may be parallels in each culture. 

• How can we use our imagination to understand and appreciate other cultures?

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