Culture

Today I got to thinking about the value of culture, what it plays in our lives, and the emphasis we put on it.

Romero, my brother from Brazil (foreign exchange student) is visiting for a couple of weeks. And today we went to his other host family's place for a Brazilian dinner. Nancy and Terri love Brazil and have hosted a number of foreign exchange students from Brazil and visit Brazil about every two years for missionary trips.

So a few of those former host students live in the surrounding area and with Romero back in the US for these past couple weeks, they decided to have a Brazilian dinner.

The food was delicious and it was awesome to learn a little bit about the culture.

But it's so amazing to watch two cultures come together.

Here's what I've noticed from interacting with lots of people from all over the world:

Everyone loves to share about their culture. For the most part, humans are self-centered. And we love to share what is familiar to us and our lives. Not only is Romero really quick to talk about his culture but we are quick to tell him about ours. And this is how people are. We WANT to share our way of life with others.

Culture is important. Believe it or not, we identify by our culture. It molds and shapes it and we have to justify it and make it something that is semi-appealing. But culture makes up all of who we are. And parts of it mold us to become parts of our culture that we don't want to be.

We LOVE to experience other cultures!! We love to be exposed to new things.

Ok well that last one might just be me ;-) But I love getting to experience new foods and languages and ways of life. I mean I'm not always comfortable with it but it's SO FASCINATING to see how differently other people live, yet how at the same time just HOW similar we are. I love culture.

I want to go travel and experience many many more cultures. I'll always love my culture, where I come from, what has shaped me. It will always be home. But I would love to go see the cultures of the rest of the world :-)