Before starting this entry I should say that my country has a lot of common values and assumptions with the United States of America but it also has so many differences in the culture, way of living and behavior. My job this time is to show you some of these differences and the common things we have…
It is important to mention that people from USA has a different and stronger meaning about what individualism is; in my country we don’t have that consistent meaning about individualism, it depends on the family but the majority of families and communities don’t share this kind of American individualism. Families’ chiefs are always giving us everything until we grow up and make a career, start working, or get a job; they wait for us to gain our own money and we don’t have to worry for things we may want because parents always give us everything we ask for, is like if they wanted us to have everything they couldn’t when they were children.
Thinking about privacy, Venezuelans decide when we want to have privacy, in a family we just don’t have so much privacy with our relatives and especially our parents because we share everything and we trust each other; it's different when we don’t really know someone like in streets or a mall, we prefer to keep our privacy. In the United States you like to keep every time your privacy by knocking the door before coming into your own home or keeping your personal space from others… That just doesn’t happen in my country and maybe that’s why a hug or cheek kiss can mean so much things in the US! Sometimes I think that we are so warm in Venezuela and we think Americans are so cold but it’s because we don’t really know American’s privacy meaning. We all ought to respect each other and understand who is in a higher range even in your work place, school, or University; at the same time we owe respect to older people and Spanish has two ways to say “YOU”: we say “TU” when talking about a friend, a partn
er, siblings, people of the same age of you and also parents if you were raised in that way. When we want to show respect we have to say “USTED” and we don't talk to an older one as closer as we do with a young one. Nevertheless we can still be affective and we can behave in the same way we always do. Compared to the United States’ culture Venezuela can seem like a respectful country, that’s because in the USA people refer to everybody in the same way because they’re all equal. Likewise the respect to each one is understood and people can know without words when someone is showing it or not.
Venezuelans are not punctual people, not as punctual as Americans are. We don’t really have respect for each other time like Americans have and that’s why waiting for someone is not difficult for us. We almost always make things at the last minute because it seems that we just can’t really calculate the time we need to make things. The good side about it: we can improvise or fix it up!
In some places of my country there are no as “opened mind” people as in other places. I guess this happens in other continents but in Americans countries this happens a lot because there are big and small cities; big cities can be more opened in beliefs and accepting new ideals but small towns are more conservative because of the quantity of population. For example in the capital you can notice that people aren’t interested in history, tradition, beliefs, anniversaries and religion but in smaller towns they do. In almost every town and city of the United States you can see people really interested in their history and anniversaries, people here in the US is really patriot.
The raising materialism rules North American and Venezuelan’s way of living nowadays. We have a lot of comforts and sometimes we have things we don’t really need but make our lives more comfortable!
If we want to compare both countries considering competition Venezuelans like Americans are very competitive every time. In my country we are all in a competition for everything: money, grades, houses, cars, feelings, and also attention… That’s maybe because we always want the first place. We want to be outstanding!
To conclude, the similarities and differences between both countries could fill a huge list. It doesn’t matter because we’re all in this world to learn of each other, and we have to do it. Our differences and contrasts make us unique and interesting for other people; we have to show the world the country where we come from and good or bad things, because it is culture…
No comments:
Post a Comment