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I chose my cultural presentation topic of the Polish health care system in part because of my personal interest in the medical field, but also because of the numerous stories that my language partner had shared with me of her recent experiences in Polish hospitals with her brother.  She described that after her brother's brain aneurism and subsequent surgery to remove a piece of his skull so that his brain could swell and then return to normal that her brother was not properly cared for in the hospital where he was being treated.  Nurses went days without caring for him and checking to see if he was responsive after the surgery resulting in complications that required her family to seek the attention of medical specialists and embark on even more dangerous procedures to fix the damage caused by his neglect.

In my research, I expected to find that her brother's predicament was the result of a poorly equipped and poorly trained staff that was indicative of the Polish health care system.  This assumption turned out to be horribly predicated upon the tumultuous history of Poland as a nation which it was able to successfully climb back from in a rather short amount of time since its separation from the Soviet Union.  My research thus left me puzzled as to why my language partner's brother had received such poor statistics when all government documents and statistics that I found suggested that the Polish healthcare system was extremely successful and becoming even more so with each passing year.

These statistics, I discovered, completely ignored the widespread back-door dealings that the Polish health care system revolved around in order to boost the appearance of Poland among the world community.  In actuality there exists a certain type of accepted black market that revolves around selling the services and attentions of doctors and nurses alike for exorbitant bribes.  In this system, the cultural norm is to provide the physician and staff caring for a patient with an "envelope payment" to ensure that one receives the best quality care.  This cultural practice suggests that the bribe which my language partner's family may have presented to the nurses in the hospital where her brother was being treated may have paled in comparison to what other individuals in the hospital were paying and as a result, the nurses entirely neglected him and his condition, leaving him to suffer permanent brain damage and possibly even death.

This method of conducting health care and its cultural acceptance in Poland utterly disgusts me as someone who plans to enter the medical field.  I have always conceived of the practice of medicine as one of helping people regardless of their ability to pay for their treatment as reflected by the hypocratic oath that every doctor must take.  I can somewhat understand that in a country where the government does not provide adequate aid for medical practices to exist, doctors and nurses alike are forced to resort to such measures as taking bribes but I in no way see how a rationalization like this can lead one to simply allow one to neglect a patient with a clean conscience.  However, if a solution exists to this dilemma it lies not within attempting to change what has become the cultural norm of the Poles who have accepted "envelope payments" as necessary evils but rather in the redistribution of government wealth.  In America, the percentage of government spending that is spent on health care is over 12 times that of Poland and for a nation that has successfully reestablished itself economically, educationally and otherwise in its era of peace since the Cold War, perhaps it is time that the government cease projecting the appearance of adequate medical care to the world and begin the slow process of providing for the physical needs of its populace.

-Bangladesh Healthcare Presentation-

I found this presentation fascinating in its style, simply because the speaker was able to do the entire ten minute presentation in his target language.  The topic as well struck home with me as I intend to go into the medical care field in impoverished areas such as those that were described in the presentation.  What I found particularly intriguing was that in a nation in which the government only spends 3.5% of its GDP on health care, the costs that individuals must pay for treatment remains extremely low.  This lies in direct contrast with my own research of the Polish health care system in which, since only 4.5 % of government spending is directed toward healthcare, doctors do not treat patients with adequate care unless they receive substantial bribes that can amount to an average Pole's yearly salary.  The provision of treatment for $1 to $1.50 in Bangladesh therefore seems absurd and reflects the different moral solutions that cultures arrive at when presented with the same issue.  The Polish requirement of extremely high fees for medical service is not in every case a malicious act, but rather one of necessity to purchase equipment to provide adequate healthcare to the public while the Bangladeshi's affordable fee of $1 does not allow for the provision of state of the art equipment and therefore provides largely inadequate health care.  I also found it interesting that the Bangladeshi culture relies heavily upon the village pharmacy for medical care.  This adaptation of the medical care system is shared by Poland and many other european countries and it strikes me as particularly strange that the United States is so reluctant to adopt this system as self-medication extremely reduces the costs which individuals must pay to receive treatment and would be appreciated by many in the current recessions which have plagued our country.

-Education In India-

What I found fascinating about this presentation was not necessarily the educational aspect of the Indian culture but how the education of men and women reflected the lack of progression that their culture has experienced while much of the rest of the world has adopted a sense of sexual equality.  According to the statistics presented, women's education in India is not considered a priority either by them or by their parents.  Young Indian women are burdened with household chores and other responsibilities to such an extent that their education is often neglected and when the opportunity arises for a family to further invest in the future of their daughter they do not due to the effectual permanent transfer of the daughter out of her family and into another with marriage.  In the Polish culture, such a practice would be entirely unheard of since the family unit is valued over all else in life and the intentional removal of someone from the family or a neglect of any aspect of a family member's well being would be unthinkable.  I am curious however as to why there is such a slow progression of the concept of sexual equality in India since it does not have a religion or other cultural hallmark to prevent it from adopting the western understanding.  Polish's cultural malleability in their ability to accept such changes has occurred almost instantaneously in the past regardless of the contrary understandings that it presented to the widely held catholic religious doctrines that presented a barrier to such progress.

In my interactions with my language partner I have come to observe an astounding amount of interpersonal contact between her and her family on a daily basis.  Many of her stories told refer to her family and their interactions rather than the large parties and humorous events experienced between friends that those in the American culture prefer to address in conversation.  I initially discounted this trend, believing it to be the product of homesickness or some other emotion that produced elevated feelings for and desire to consistently recall her family but upon further reflection I decided to research the distinctive qualities of the Polish household, its history, and the values that emerge within its related community as a result.

What I discovered was that the Polish culture values family higher than any other achievable goal in life.  Contrary to the American dream of leaving home, going off and making something of one's self and striking it rich in some way or another, the Poles value a happy marriage and a happy family life over everything else.  The great importance of the family unit in Polish culture is a result of the condensation over time of a strong cultural bond with the community over time.  Scholars claim that in medieval times, when surrounding countries were experiencing peasant revolts and other types of rebellions to equalize the wealth and power of individual families, the Poles remained entirely peaceful toward their feudal leadership.  Nobles in the Polish community regarded themselves and their subjects as a cohesive family unit with different roles rather than as the common european understanding of a type of master-slave relationship.  Over time, the feelings of trust and respect that existed within this early Polish culture was forced to condense with the collapse of feudalism, causing what was once a great love of the nation of Poland and its fairness to become an equally great respect and trust of others in ones community.  Since, the size of what the Pole considered the family unit has shrunk to what the rest of the world conceives of it as, however the Polish culture still retains a nations worth of love, trust, and respect within a single household according to scholars.  As a result, anything that other cultures would seek outside of the home, such as finding a job, getting a loan, or buying an apartment the Poles seek within the home, often working for extended family or friends of relatives and living in additions built on family property.

Contrary to the common causes for dissolution of family bonds in Europe and America, where sexual preference, religious preference, and disobedience amount to unforgivable betrayals, studies have shown that the only offense that results in the expulsion of one from a family in Poland is the betrayal of the community or nation to a threatening power.  This understanding appears to be a cultural representation of the lingering age-old motifs of trust and respect that echo from the mediaeval period erupting in response to the hostile takeovers that Poland has experienced in the recent historical events of World War II and the Cold War.  Perhaps this is a factor in the cultural distrust and lack of communication with individuals who are unable to replicate the grammar forms of politeness in the polish language that I have previously described.  It is reasonable to think that those Poles who had spent so long in foreign countries that they were considered by their own countrymen as "betrayers" were identifiable through their awkwardness with the nuance of Polish language and therefore were largely spurned and ignored.  The ability for those who sold out their comrades to the invasive powers during this time period would still be able to mimic a universal nonverbal politeness which may explain why this is currently discounted and distrusted in the Polish culture.

In a recent encounter with a Polish speaker in which I tested the products of my Polish studies, I found that the woman with which I was speaking was extremely offended by my speech.  It was not a disrespect of her language that provoked such feelings as she later commented that my accent and vocabulary in the language was impressive for a beginner, but rather that the way in which I structured my grammar was insulting to her as an individual.  She claimed that this was a result of my "impoliteness" in not referring to her in the third person, apologizing or thanking her at the beginning of my sentences and my lack of reference to her as Miss.  As I thought that I had approached her in an extremely friendly and polite manner as she had acquiesced to aiding me in my studies this revelation left me utterly confused.  In my further research of the topic, I discovered a study by Professor Eva Ongiermann  in which she analyzes the use of polite speech and the importance of polite grammatical constructs in Polish as well as other european languages.  She concludes that the amount of necessary polite discourse in order to not offend the addressed party is 6 % of communication in English and approximately 20% in Polish and other Slavonic languages.

As none of her statistical data was directly presented in the study, I assume that this translates into some form of English requiring one to say "Please open that door" in order to achieve the threshold of politeness while in Poland the necessary phrase would be something to the effect of "Would you mind please opening that door sir?"  In addition, it would appear that this cultural construct has produced a type of barrier between native Polish speakers and those who are more ignorant of its grammatical constructs such as myself as the Polish understanding of politeness relies almost entirely upon speech rather than body language.  The 20% of necessary polite communication is therefore broken down into approximately 19% polite speech and 1% polite action while the 6% of necessary polite communication in English is essentially reversed, with 5% polite action and 1% polite speech.  That is to say that a native polish speaker who praises his audience to no end but does so with a grimace on his face would most likely be accepted as polite in Poland and offensive in America while the native English speaker who warmly smiles at every Polish individual he encounters but expresses himself with clumsy speech will be rejected outright.

I find this cultural construct of politeness requirements in the United States and other english speaking nations to be understandable since the language of english is taught around the globe and as such has been adapted into "Indian English" and "Chinese English" whose grammatical constructs are similar but are not always identical.    The average American encounters many different forms of broken english and strange accents on a daily basis and expecting conformity to a universal representation of politeness in speech in such an environment is absurd.  Thus the American understanding that a smile, a handshake, and eye contact indicate politeness is reasonable.  However, it appears strange to me that even though Poles do not encounter the same level of diversity on a daily basis that they would still emphasize the importance of politeness in speech over that of action and that they would place politeness in such high esteem that those who do not abide by its rules, such as myself and other tourists, are oftentimes completely ignored.  No doubt an explanation exists within the cultural history of Poland and its language development, however, I can not seem to find a reasonable source concerning this in my research.

I had originally intended to do this post on a uniquely polish traditional holiday however, I became particularly intrigued by this particular event which is celebrated in multiple nations surrounding Poland as well, albeit in a slightly different manner.  Dyngus Day (the same day as easter monday) is a holiday in which men douse women with water and whip their legs with switches.  The origins of this holiday are widely disputed among scholars, some claiming that it is an attempted adaptation of pagan purity rituals into the christian calender much like the tradition of spring fertility imagery has been adapted into the christian easter tradition while others claim that it is a long standing polish courting tradition that has nothing to do with religious practices and developed at least 200 years before the introduction of Christianity into Poland.

Although the holiday is intriguing in its originality and origins, what interested me the most about it is how changes that have developed over time in its practices reflect back upon the similar changes that occurred within the Polish culture and society.  Specifically that the longstanding cultural tradition was adapted in the late 1900s to allow for a day in which women were allowed to practice the same actions against the men in their community.  This tradition became associated with Easter tuesday, the day after Dyngus day.  A few decades later in the early 2000s the tradition adapted to men dousing men with water, women dousing women, and men and women dousing each other all on Dyngus day.  I find that this is a prime example of the ways in which Polish culture has reacted quickly to the changes in societal norms that have occurred over the last seventy years, namely the feminist movement and the introduction of homosexuality as a socially acceptable construct.  That is to say that the creation of the second day of the tradition which provide women the freedom to respond to the affronts they encountered on Dyngus day and the ability for men to douse men and women to douse women were not adaptations that were lobbied for and that struggled to gain momentum, but were natural and accepted additions which attested to the cultural malleability of Poland.  If such a shift in an American cultural shift would, in my opinion, take hundreds of years if it were not implemented by law.  An example of the United States' cultural rigidity in this regard is the difficulties and law suits that have arisen in attempting to remove the necessary recitation of "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance by children in schools whose families do not subscribe to the Abrahamic religions.  I think such radical differences between the cultural malleability of America and Poland reflect the ways in which the two nations have developed, namely that Poland's history has been fraught with being conquered by neighboring titans and forced to adopt their cultural understandings while America has remained entirely unoppressed and instead has become accustomed to asserting its understandings and practices upon other nations.  As such it may be that the Poles have come to understand the meanings of traditions not in their strict adherence but rather in their overall observation while Americans feel the need to remain unyielding cultural models for the foreigners they wish to change.

Basic Conversation: What time is it? Where are you from? How old are you?

Artifact5

This deals with weather as well as focuses on the usage of today,tomorrow,yesterday.

Artifact4

Brief conversation about food. Basically saying, I ate chicken at a restaurant. The food was good , but the restaurant was far.

Artifact3

Basic Conversation: How are you today?

Written twice for practice purposes

Artifact2

 Description: The alphabet which consists of 32 letters, most of which have full and half forms. I also listed the half forms.

Artifact1

The other day, one of the students I tutor asked me to do something for him at school the next day.  I waited and waited for him to say “Please,” as many an adult did to me when I was his age.  In the world of manners I grew up in, “May I…Please…Thank you!” were all requisites of any polite request to be granted.  When I explained what I was waiting for, he was slightly exasperated and bemused.  He said that this had been an issue before, but that the habit of please and thank you was not one he had yet developed.  He went on to explain that this is because please and thank you are words so uncommonly used in Hindi and Nepali.  In these languages, the subject that one uses to address a person indicates respect and incorporates the please and thank you formalities all into one word.  I was taught to always use the respectful form of the you (aap, versus tum) in order to avoid being rude in Hindi.  I thought it was interesting to see how a person’s background in one language can seemingly affect their mannerisms in another…

This is my first reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6QadW0J3Mo

And this is my second reading near the end of the semester.  I can reading the same passage over a minute faster. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycpC7IzAE2A

When I told people in India that I was American, I was fortunate always to receive a warm and enthusiastic reception.  The most typical responses of working class Indians were along the lines of, “America! The land of dreams!”  and “We love Obama!”  Many people described to me their hopes of “making it” to America at some point during their lives.  If they could not afford to do so, then they worked in hopes of being able to send their children.  I avoided admitting the cost of a plane ticket to the US in rupees to enthusiastic patients at a free hospital where I volunteered.  I took pictures with families excited to meet a real American as they told me all about the wonders of America. 

After some time, I couldn’t help but wonder:  Are the people who make it here ever disappointed? 

Yes, America is wonderful.  Yes I am appreciative and generally proud of my citizenship and country.  My travels have enlightened me about other cultures, but also my own and I realize how fortunate I am to call this most coveted place home.  But, I still wonder, is it all that it’s cracked up to be?  In talking to some Indians about the US, one would think America to be a place free of corruption, violence, injustice, and poverty, a place where everyone truly has an equal opportunity to be what he or she would like.  And yet, that is far from the truth.  So I wonder, are immigrants to the US ever disappointed?

For Indians, there are certain improvements in quality of life here that are undeniable.  Saifali explained one example of this is terms of space in the library.  (He’d previously been marveling at how empty the library was, though I did explain that one wouldn’t typically expect to find the basement of the library jam packed on a Friday evening.)  He said, just look around here at all this space.  If we were in India, this library might only be one story; forget about us having our own table to sit at; we might have nowhere to sit at all and it would be loud because there would be so many people.

But improvements in physical living conditions, comforts and securities surely come with a tradeoff of living in a place likely so different from any they have previously known.  Everyday accepted practices, religious holidays, and clothing that is so normal at home become unusual anomalies here.  The young girl I tutor tells me all the time that she wishes to go back to Nepal.  She hasn’t adjusted to life here yet: school is difficult, English is difficult, and connecting with friends is difficult.  She can’t understand the complicated reasons why her family had to leave home, she just knows there are a lot of things in the US that are hard and that she doesn’t like.  Her older brother and parents seem slightly happier here than she, perhaps because they have a more vivid recollection and understanding of why they left.  Her brother told me that when he left Nepal, he thought that everywhere in the world was the same; he didn’t know that the US would be different and he is pleased with many of the differences he sees.  I still don’t know that the pros outweigh the cons or that American lives up the expectations of all the refugees and immigrants that come here.

I found that this chapter removed many of the assumptions that I had previously held concerning my competencies in english, particularly in conversation analysis.  According to the author, native speakers in a language have a grasp on the intricacies of interruptions, attention getting, topic nomination, topic shifting, avoidance, topic repair, and clarification.  However, I feel as though I not only fail to properly express myself in these areas on a regular basis but also was largely unaware that these were topics that could be learned at all.  I merely assumed that since most individuals are like me and have not mastered the finer points of conversation that it simply could not be done or perfection at conversation was an inborn trait.  I found that it was much more useful to simply learn to deal properly with all aspects of awkward misinterpretations, interruptions, attention getting, and the like as it arose since being a master in conversation also does little to ensure you will be able to properly employ any of these strategies since there is no way to gauge the other individual in the conversation's competencies.  Awkward conversation seems inevitable, and when I fail to get another's attention or fail to effectively shift a topic I have never considered this a result of not employing the proper cultural phrases, intonations, and gestures but rather a result of the other person's disinterestedness.  I believe that this ignorance also spilled into my understandings of other cultures as well since I assumed that the secondary meanings and pragmatics of phrases in America translated into similar understandings in other cultures and vice versa.  Of course I realized that there are certain ridiculous phrases that cannot even be translated such as "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" and still keep their meaning, but i did not fully comprehend the cultural phrases that pervade every aspect of daily living such as a conversation between me and my roomate:

"Yo!" = I have entered the house

"whatsup?" = how was your day?

"same-old same-old" = My day was normal and nothing has changed between now and the last time I described it to you

"dinner?" = would you like to make dinner soon or have you already eaten?

"we'll see" = No I have not had dinner and am not yet sure when I would like to eat or if I would like to eat the same thing that you want

Although I always knew that direct translations of exchanges such as this do little in the way of conveying the same intent in another culture, i always assumed that they would remain within the same parameters.  That is to say that a form of the question "how are you" (aka whatsup) would mean "how was your day" in other language and cultures when in fact it could be that their understanding of "how was your day" is phrased in a question like "did the birds sing today" or some similar phrase.  Moreover, I would argue that exchanges such as these make up a large percentage of what a person says on a daily basis.  The author suggests that the solution to this problem lies in teaching proper cultural phrase exchange and meaning while teaching vocabulary and grammar of the foreign language to students.  However, I think that this is an impossible task as these types of exchanges are dependent upon not only the status of the two individuals in each other's lives, their occupations, their genders, etc. such that the same exchange that I had with my roommate would be entirely different if I were speaking to my mother, my brother, a friend that I do not live with, a guest of little significance, a guest of great importance, the plumber etc.  and each exchange would have the same meaning with no words that actually reflected that meaning.  In addition, such phrases that are spoken to individuals in each capacity change either more or less frequently according to the culture and in some cases the previous phrase that was used becomes more of an insult or cultural taboo.  As a result this cannot be properly taught due to the disconnect between the time of study and immersion into the other culture which may cause unintended affronts.  For example, saying "welcome home woman" as opposed to "welcome home sweetheart" may cause strife as a result of the improper teaching of English to the speaker.

Within this chapter much of the information that I have already studied concerning culture shock and the marked differences between cultures and its effects were repeated.  What I found particularly interesting however, was the introduction of a self-perception element of cultural difference and the effect that it has on language learning ability.  According to the author and research conducted on the subject, there is a direct correlation between the perception of social distance or the number and significance of cultural differences between the language learning individual and the people in the society of the target language.  The studies showed that the optimal point for language learning lies somewhere between the normal social distance between the two cultures as a whole and complete and total immersion into the target language's culture and lies closer to total immersion.  I find this understanding fascinating as it applies to my own experiences immersing myself in other cultures, specifically that in Costa Rica where i was able to obtain fluency extremely quickly.  I had previously understood this to be a result of having fully adopted the Costa Rican culture which accelerated my learning of the language past what it could have been otherwise.  However, with this new information, I believe that I may have deluded myself into thinking that I had fully accomplished this as in my past reflections on culture shock I recalled the reverse flow of information between myself and the local tico culture.  It may have been a possibility that it was my lack of full immersion that perpetuated my fluency rather than my perceived cultural switch.  However, I doubt that this is the case since the chapter cited this effect as a result of "perceived social distance" and my "perceived social distance" from the culture at the time was none.

In addition, I found the description of the Anomie state in the chapter to be particularly compelling.  The Anomie state is essentially a state of transition in which an individual begins to think and dream in the target language for the first time which is also associated with cultural confusion of assimilating into the target culture.  I find the author's description of the Anomie state interesting because he describes how it is a one-time rock bottom occurrence in the transition between cultures.  However, in my own exploits i believe that I have encountered this experience multiple times in transitioning into speaking in spanish in multiple contexts.  I have always rationalized this strange experience as the "thinking in no language" in between giving up on thinking in one language to transition into thinking in another.  I always took this as a necessary transitionary phase to occur when traveling in and out of your native and other cultures, for example, in my travels to Costa Rica, i first experienced this Anomie point in becoming fluent in spanish and then again when coming back to America and having to transition back into english.  Each time that I have travelled to a spanish speaking country whether CR or otherwise I have experienced this same event.

I also found the author's argument concerning teaching English as a world language to be counterintuitive.  He argues that for a language such as English to be taught in a country such as China it is more advantageous for a native chinese speaker who has learned English in school to teach others the language since they have a greater understanding of what transitional elements lie in switching from their native language to English.  An American who is fluent in the chinese language would not have these advantages and would inevitably teach English to chinese children in the way it was taught to him which would not be necessarily as conducive to their particular learning style.  However, I believe that a native chinese speaker who taught other native speakers English would not only result in the chinese-English that he describes but would also rob the students from learning the cultural elements of the language as well as the language itself.  Without the cultural understandings, the students would essentially be learning vocabulary and grammar rather than a language.  Specific cultural intonations to convey emotion, elements of false speech, and other intricacies of the English language would be completely lost to them and the hybrid language that they would develop would not be effective in neither their native culture nor their target culture.

Unfortunately, I was unable to access the culture shock video of University of Richmond international students.  Instead, I decided to watch an online presentation by a student at Columbia University who explains the processes involved in culture shock for those entering America from foreign nations and relates his own personal experiences about coming to America.  This presentation can be accessed at www.internationalstudent.com.  In his presentation, he outlines that culture shock consists of three phases: the "honeymoon" phase, the "what am I doing here" phase, and the "where is happy hour" phase.  He describes that the "honeymoon" phase is identified by a sense of everything around you becoming hazy and you forgetting who you are in the overwhelming amount of input that you are observing, all of which evokes an awe struck type of emotion.  Next he argues is the "what am I doing here" phase in which after a prolonged period of feeling as if they are not themselves, the individual attempts to revert their personality back into what it was before they became immersed in American culture.  However, in doing so, many students find that they cannot successfully function within the American culture as the person that they are accustomed to being and the panic that this revelation results in is built upon by other difficulties such as their inability to convey themselves and what they wish to say to others properly and their lack of deep friendships that they have developed with anyone in the new culture in the short amount of time which they have spent in it.  As a result, the student seeks to surround himself or herself with others who can most closely relate to their difficulties, namely those from the same culture or region of the world.  This action simply prolongs the length of the "what am I doing here phase" until the individual builds strong relationships with those in the new culture and puts forth a concerted effort to identify and embrace their new place in their community.  When this occurs, the "where is happy hour" phase occurs in which the student acquires a permanent emotional equilibrium somewhere between the "honeymoon" and "what am I doing here" phases.  The statistical surveys provided in the presentation suggest that the average amount of time that process of culture shock takes is 3-4 months but it could take as little as a few weeks or as many as six or seven months for some people to progress through these phases.

Although the presentation is based not only on the personal experiences of those at Columbia University and the statistics that they have gathered and its conclusions no doubt resonate with many people who have come to America, I believe from my own experiences of traveling the world that there is no such thing as an American becoming culture shocked.  Or at least, the effect on American individuals is extremely diminished.  In my own experiences, a vast majority of foreign cultures place the idea of America on a pedestal and therefore their perceptions of Americans.  As a result, whenever I would attempt to immerse myself into a culture I would find myself repelled, not out of an affront at my social shortcomings, but out of a desire of those around me to preserve my culture as much as possible.  I have no intention of appearing arrogant in this regard, but even after spending months in Costa Rica attempting to fully assimilate and immerse myself in the culture i found that the new friends that I had made wanted to talk about Eminem and school in America and what my life back home was like instead of allowing me to essentially forget who I was and become one of them.  They never wanted to speak spanish with me, only ever their broken and developing English.  On multiple occasions I was invited to come and speak and help teach english at the local school and I was even broadcasted on their national radio, but again, to my dismay, in english and not spanish.  I find that this is an opposite type of culture shock, one that is not an overwhelming drowning in a sea of the foreign thoughts, feelings, and emotions of others experience when they come to America.  Instead it is a sharing of the thoughts, feelings, and predispositions of one person, the American divided equally and in manageable amounts to all those within the hosting culture.  The flow of information is reversed.

I have never encountered a culture that was disinterested in Americans to the point where it would provide a true culture shock experience.  Instead, most other cultures either love Americans, as I experienced in Costa Rica, or hate Americans, as I experienced in France.  In the two weeks that I stayed in Paris, culture shock in any regard was unattainable due to the vehemence with which the french people that I interacted with opposed any sharing of anything with an American.  As a result of the artificial wall that they erected between their culture and myself I was unable to experience much more than sight seeing and remained relatively oblivious to their view of the world.  Unlike the cultural exchanges previously described this was one of no information flow whatsoever between the french people that I met and myself and that is why I believe that there was no element of culture shock.

In this video I am explaining a Psalm from the bible.  The reason I am explaining this one in particular is because my Bangladeshi friend who lives in a slum in Bangladesh literally asked me about that particular Pslam and the meaning of it. 

I noticed I have trouble linking sentences together.  Therefore my speech sounds very staggered.  Also I realizad that I say “I” way too much.  Bengali only use personal pronouns when absolutely necessary.   If I am to sound more fluent, I must be confident that the verb conjugation alone will indicate the subject of the sentence.  I furthermore had trouble in this video with a dependent clause starting with “who”.  I know how to do those theoretically I just need to practice using them in everyday speech more often. 

Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUCYbrEgWPY

Kaitlin Education Interview

Interview

This video was me talking with my friend Kamrul who lives on the roof of an flat complex.  He works as a elevator and a driver.  I talked with him about health care in Bangladesh. 

I struggled with if then clauses, mainly because the require its a special verb conjugation.  I also forgot that Bangladeshis tend to use the if then clauses instead of the when then patterm that I am used to in English.  Furthermore, I described everything accurately, but not precisely.  In order to describe situations better, I need to improve my vocabulary.  Lastly, I had trouble adding the word “also” in my sentences. 

Contrastly, I though I switched well between persons for verb conjugation in this video.  To get better, I need to practice more with if then clauses, and well as practice using the vocabulary that I already know. 

Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyo7TxLysB0