Meal time comparison between USA and Colombia

A daily schedule for an average American office worker begins waking up at 6:00, getting the children ready for school bus, at 7:00 am, the family will have a breakfast including a cereal, eggs, toasts, coffee or juice. Most of them will take a lunch box previously prepared basically with a sandwich, hamburger or hot dog for mid-day, because they will have a 20 minutes short brake for children and 30 minutes brake as lunch time for adults. Children begin school around 7:30 am and finish about 1:30 pm. Adults begin their 8 hour shift at 9:00 and end up at 5:00 pm.

As we can see Lunch doesn´t have the same meaning as it has in our culture, for us lunch has been the main meal for many years, it´s an important moment to share with our families usually between 12:00 mid-day to 2:00 pm., although this has been changing depending on the type of activity we do, now we don´t share with our relatives as we used to, but lunch stills our main meal.  

Holidays and Beliefs

In the USA there are officially ten holidays: New Year, Christmas, labor bay, thanksgiving, Memorial Day, veteran´s day, Columbus, Independence, Washington´s and Martin Luther King´s birthdays, none of them is a religious commemoration like in our country, where we have seventeen holidays per year half of them religious. We share some with the American customs as: New Year, and Christmas, and the Independence and Labor Day, but in different days.

Our traditional holy week is only celebrated by Christians in the USA and is not an official holiday, it is called Easter and is celebrated by children looking for plastic eggs decorated, filled and hid previously with candies or small gifts. In other states of the USA is called Eastern Bunny that consist of someone with a rabbit costume going around giving candies and gifts to children.

Due to the huge population with so many foreign, from different countries and different beliefs the American society is kind of neutral regarding religion, opposite to our culture based on Christianity and Catholicism.

Families in USA just like in our culture are the foundation of the society, having elder people as the backbone for the group.

Values are the same in both cultures, although there is a lot more respect in the North American culture no matter how you look or how you´re dressed up. Globalization has affected society around the world no matter where you are, everyday family members don´t share time as they use to. The improper use of technology has become a gap, which is making us solitaries.  

The most relevant concepts about Language Culture and Learning

A way to approach a foreign language is having contact with the country´s culture trough out authentic material in context, managing daily life situations, giving learners the possibility to have contact, recognize, understand and define different attitudes and behaviors from another society, which probably would make them appropriate deeply the second language.

The best way to accomplish the sociocultural competence when learning English Language, is having an open mind ready to accept different attitude, values, behaviors, opinions and habits, which might go against our own culture, but having this comparisons will let us appropriate the second language as a new opportunity, a new world a new life. 

What American's like to eat...

What an average american like to eat...

On the following video there is a short class about what american people eat on the daily basis. this choices differ a lot to what an average Colombian eat everyday. 
I invite you to watch the video and post your comments about what do you think are the differences among Colombian and USA eating habits.

American Holidays: 

One of the most important holidays for the people in the USA is the Christmas celebration. This celebration differs from Colombian Christmas celebration on many factor such as: it is celebrated on the 25th not the 24th of December. They wait for Santa Claus to come. Colombians wait for baby Jesus to be born. The presents are given to the children on the 25th. Colombians wait to midnight on the 24th. They have a big lunch together with the family on the 25th. Colombians party for most of the night of the 24th and sometimes have dinner with the family. In the USA the weather is very cold during this celebration. For Colombians there is tropical weather which allows people to go out the streets and celebrate differently.  

Some factor are alike between the two cultures, those are: the lights around the houses. The Christmas tree decorations. The meaning of being together with the family. The act of giving presents even though it is not on the same day. 

 For more of this cultural information about Christmas in the USA I invite you to watch the following video. 

My personal experience on living the American Culture for 7 years.

One of the most important lessons in life that living immerse in a different country is the understanding of what a culture means and how to respect that culture even though my thoughts and beliefs could be the opposite. 

I lived in the USA for 7 years, when I arrived there I could not speak a word in English, nor eat any of their food nor understand the way they deal with germs and education either. 

Understanding and respecting their culture was a process, a process in which I not only learned about the american culture but also, South African culture and Mexican culture because we were cultural exchange visitors and we had to share our journey with them. 

What people normally do is criticized the other  people's beliefs and ways of do different things, then they compared those behaviors and styles with their own and finally, after many years of immersion they can learn to respect and many times adapt many of those behaviors and ways to their own.

One major aspect learnt through the years is that we cannot generalized a country's culture by one member or a few. In order to mention an aspect as cultural it needs to be predominant on  different groups of people there and be recognized for many.

Life when on a immersion changes a lot, you change your own perspective of the world and learn to take from each learning moment what may apply to you and  your ones. You get use to having lots of resources for teaching, to having all you need in your hand and to find answers when you have questions. 

You also get used to people looking at you differently, like you don't belong there because in order for understanding other peoples culture you need to be open minded and free of prejudice and the people in the USA is very conservative and don't allow racial differences that easy. The truth is many other Americans, the educated ones, learn also to respect your culture and seek knowledge from you even when sometimes what you do, eat or believe can be very different from what they do, eat or believe. 

It is very important to teach our students the differences among people from every where, including our own country. Kids need to grow up with an understanding of been unique in the world and face life without the barriers of race or culture. 

COLOMBIA AND THE USA PRESENTATION

Colombia is a beautiful country with many things to offer as you can appreciate yourself in the following video.

Interesting facts about the United States are among the many things that attract millions of people to the usa and want to be a part of their culture

Please watch these two videos and enjoy learning languages

An average American typical day

It may come as a surprise to some that when distributed acrossall American adults (15+, male and female), including weekends, the average American spent just 3.57 hours out of every 24 on work and work-related activities in 2011, according to the BLS' American Time Survey. The number one time consuming activity? Sleep, at 8.71 hours (an all time high for the series), followed by Leisure and Sports with 5.21 hours in second place. The balance of the 6.51 hours remaining? 1.77 hours for Household Activities, 1.24 for Eating and Drinking, and so on, until we hit less than half an hour (0.47 hours) spent on education activities. At least the average time spent on telephone calls, mail and email is not more than the amount of time Americans spend edumacating themselves. 

Americans be working less but at least they are sleeping more that ever 

On the days that they worked, 36 percent of employed persons age 25 and over with a bachelor's degree or higher did some work at home, compared with only 11 percent of those with less than a high school diploma.

From a media perspective, older demographics watch more TV but advertisers are keener on younger audiences – in particular young males with disposable incomes. We believe that this could change, as older demographics are more tech savvy and engage with social media and innovations such as second screen applications.

Multiple jobholders were more likely to work on an average weekend day than were single jobholders—57 percent compared with 33 percent. Multiple jobholders were also more likely to work at home than single jobholders—31 percent compared with 20 percent.

Taken from: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/how-average-american-adult-spends-24-hours-each-day 


A TYPICAL DAY FOR AN AVERAGE COLOMBIAN CITIZEN 

The typical day in the life of a 16 year old in the country of Colombia is not that different from that of an American 16 year olf. Colombia is a very modernized country with large cities and all of the modern conveniences of America. 16 year olds in Colombia eat more fresh foods, fruits and vegetables than American 16 year olds. 16 year olds in Colombia have more chores than American teenagers. Families are very strong on working together to make the home run smoothly. Most 16 year olds are huge soccer fans because that is the sport of the country. Though many 16 year olds in America enjoy soccer, the majority love football or baseball.

A general view

Good day.

This video can give us a general idea about what social competence is and their importance since the first years of any person.  I wait for your comments.