USA week 3

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Week 3

In week 3 I started off with a karaoke night with a group of people, it was a lot of fun and I even stood on stage and did a song. No matter how bad you were, you got a standing ovation and everybody sang along.

The mother in the family is a French teacher in a school in Los Angeles and she’s asked me to help her out by grading papers and logging them into the data system of the school. This is very useful because I get a taste of what will be my job later on.

We went out for dinner in a restaurant a little down the road and it was really nice to have a family dinner.

It’s so different from the ranch and I really enjoy it here. I do no longer have to get up at 7 am and work until 9pm to go straight to bed. They give me some chores to do the day after and let me fill in my own time.



We went to a very big department store to get some stuff for the house but I wandered off and actually lost them to the point I had to call them and ask were they were. I am just not used to the giant stores.



Some of the things I do are apparently very European such as not putting ice cubes in your drinks or using a fork to eat chips. The free refills still confuse me because I’m used to having one drink and needing to pay for a refill while here you can have as much as you want and you pay for the cup.



Next week I will probably not do a lot seeing I have a few days off where I would really like to wander around the neighbourhood and read some more.



CULT5 Assignment 2

Religion:


• Find out what the role of religion is in your community and how it may have changed over the last decades.



The religion in my community is mainly Jewish, my host family is part of the synagogue around the corner. Religion is very important and so is the Sabbath, the day of rest and worship and starts at sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, you see people walking around instead of using their cars and they cannot use electronics. The Sabbath is something that has not changed during the last decades and will be done by most Jewish people. My host family does not take part in Sabbath all the time but sometimes they do. The rules may always be broken during life threatening occasions. What did change a lot is the amount of people going to service. A lot of them no longer go every service but once in a while or only on special occasions. You do have to pay for membership to the synagogue.



European Awareness:


• How much do people in your area know about Europe? What do they know about the countries, the people(s), the customs, etc.?



My host family knows a lot about Europe because they travel a lot and have been to Europe many times and are going there during the Christmas holidays as well. They even have some family and friends in Belgium and the Netherlands which they talk about a lot. A few families I’ve met are also from Europe or their parents were which is funny because they know about the culture and the people in Europe. Of course I’ve met some people that ask me if we really wear clogs or if everybody smokes marijuana back home. They are not used to eating food with cutlery and use their hands a lot. The people here think we are very blunt and even rude in some way because we normally say the things we think and they are very kind here.



Home:


• Describe a typical house in your area. What is special about the architecture, the decorating style, the way people use the house, indoor v outdoor living, etc.?



I live in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the houses here differ from each other quite a lot. The house that I’m saying in is ground floor but the next door neighbours have 3 levels to their house. The colour also differs from yellow to green to grey. It’s really what the people prefer. The decorating style is mostly proud to be American, almost every house either has an American flag or a bald eagle. They mostly live inside, during the day it is just too warm to be outside and you have air-conditioning inside the houses. The houses are quite big and they have a nice sized backyard as well. Compared to the houses in the Netherlands they are a different from each other while back home we have a lot of the same houses on the same block just because that was the easiest way to build them.

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