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kbonds's picture

I'm an Amerrrcan!

 I thought a lot after class (after cake) about everyone's culture stories, and about how mine was so uninteresting. I picked the Polish side of my family, but I'm not really polish by blood, but those kolachkies at Christmas are damn good. I'm Italian a bit, and all I do that reflects that is talk with a thick Chicaaaahgo accent at times and use big hand gestures. I'm a bit Swedish, and the only remnants of that are the swedish meatballs that are my favorite food and some hand painted wooden figures we put out at christmas that belonged to my great-grandmother. I'm a tiny bit of a ton of things that we really have no cultural connection to in my family. So I suppose I'm just plain ol' Amerrrcan. 

Which makes me wonder what American culture really is. I mean, is it just our loudness, baseball, and tendency to not really care how people feel when we ask them? Because I am loud, I love baseball, and I expect people to respond "good" when I ask then how they are unless I know them well. I would really like to talk more about what American culture is with a foreign person, because I feel like I take it for granted so much that I have no idea what it is any more.

 

I understand that a big part of American culture is the "Melting pot" aspect, so that many families have a tie to their original country's culture while still being American. So is it just that America's culture isn't strong enough to outshine the cultures of other countries? Is that why I'm not seeing it as distinctly? Are we all just apple pie? and Chevy? A car company? That can't be it.

 

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