Thursday, September 16, 2010

I am Martino. I was born in Kaohsiung, which is the second large city of Taiwan. I went to unversity in 2007 and became an English major. This year, I come to the University of Mississippi as an exchange student. But shortly when I came here, I had some cultural shock, and it is good to be shocked by different cultural rules.

Casual Culture


Before I came to the States, some American students at my home university told me American culture was casual. So, there always comes a question to me: how casual is American culture? The question is answered in the picture. I was on my way to the Union. But my friend was waiting for her friend outside the library. Then anthoer friend of us came. At last, the boy in orange T-shirt showed up. One of them suddenly said, “Let’s dance.” So, we danced to the music from the boy’s cell phone, just outside the library. Shortly after a while, another student passed by, and the girl in sleeveless dress said, “You’are walking into a party.” And that’s really “casual”.

Study as a Student and Teacher

When I was in Taiwan, I was hardly called to be a teacher, giving representations and answering all the students’ questions in the class. But in America, I am expected by my teachers to give comments or to “make contributions to the class”, meaning that I should bring up something worthy of discussion in the class. In this picture, my classmate is giving her representations. When it is finished, she will be asked questions. To me, it is like I am fighting with my study.



Who Cares?

In Taiwan, when girls are sitting on a bench, they are supposed to act like a lady. But in the States, it is not the case. I wasn’t saying that girls in the State didn’t behave well. Besides, the picture is not a representative of all girls in the States. Rather, I was saying that the way the girl acted in the picture was very “casual”. She put her feet on the bench, talked on the phone, and didn’t mind my taking a picture of her. It is really interesting to see that cultural rules vary from culture to culture, and from society to society.



















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