You're Weird! Well, so are you.

Earlier this week Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, IA had a Foreign Exchange Student Banquet. Foreign Exchange students for this school year were introduced formally to the students and few facts about their life was shared about them. These students have come from all around the world. Three have come from Europe, from countries such as Spain and Norway, while others have come from Asia, like China. These foreign exchange students come here to learn in America and experience our culture. However, not only do they learn new things, we can all also gather knowledge from their experiences in their home country.

 

The foreign exchange students were presented mainly by their host family, but sometimes their classmates. They would give an explanation of where the students were from, a background about their life, talk about their family, and discuss their hobbies. All the students seem to come from different backgrounds with different traditions, because they come from different areas around the world. All of them seem really excited to be here and very interested to learn more about the American culture. The students were mentioning things that there are many things that are different about America compared to their home country. 

After the students were introduced, they were asked to say something that they find different or weird about the American culture. The student from Norway said this city is much larger than where she comes. To most of us, we believe Cedar Rapids to be a small country. Many people who are not from the area probably have never heard of the area. To hear that Cedar Rapids seemed like a big city to someone was just an astonishing fact. But it is true. Many countries are made up of many smaller cities, with the exception of a few cities that are much more populated than the others. In America that is not the case because we are such a large country.

Another student, the one from Spain, was saying how people in America eat at very awkward times. He was saying that in Spain they eat much later than we do here. People tend to eat lunch around one o’clock and eat dinner only at nine o’clock. That seems crazy to us here in America, because our lunch and dinner time is extremely earlier compared to that of Spain. We tend to eat dinner from any time in-between five to seven; hearing the fact that the Spanish eat at nine is unimaginable. I know I would be starving by then. Similarly, one of the foreign exchange students from China was saying that back in China they have a lunch room or more of a large area to eat lunch that seats 4,000 people. All the students in the whole school eat lunch at the same time. When she came here and saw the small lunch room and the amount of people in a lunch compared to the size of our school, she was shocked. The idea of having different lunch periods was just different to her. For people in America, it is just another normal thing, but looking at it from an outsider’s point of view, I understand how some of the way we do things may be weird.

One of my favorite comments came from another kid from China, whom for a foreign exchange student from China had a great English speaking ability with little accent. He was saying the amount of homework we get here is a huge amount. He said that in China they tend to get less homework that are a little longer to work out and require more thinking and analyzing. He says here we get a ton of homework that keeps going on and on. It takes him longer to do homework in America than in China. For most of us this was surprising. When thinking of stereotypes, people in China are said to be smart. Therefore, we assume they have more work to do. However, that seems to not be the case. This just shows the difference between cultures around the world. To these students, the culture in America is different, but to us, their culture is also unique.