the oddballs.

Ok, so in my travels, I often think about perceptions and misperceptions regarding culture. I think our awareness of the oddities in any particular culture become heightened when we are outside of our own culture or one we are familiar with.

Along the Tancheon River by my house recently, I've noticed a lot of older women down on the ground picking some kind of plant. I totally just assumed this was a weird Korean quirk. I snooped a little and then looked at the grocery store to figure out what exactly it was that they were picking. I figured out that they were picking Dandelion plants. Not the flowers, the leafy part.

On Saturday night, I had dinner with one of my students mothers and I asked her about this. She kind of laughed and said, "hmm, that's weird, I would think those plants are very dirty." My thoughts exactly! Think of all the dogs that have peed on those weeds. She even told me that a whole bundle of them only costs about $2.00 in the store. Which led me to believe that even a lot of Koreans find this behavior to be a little odd.

Anyway, the point of writing about this is that I think it's important to realize that there are really weird things and behaviors everywhere, but it does not mean that the whold culture is like that. Culture shock causes a hypersensitivity to the behaviors of those around us, and also I think often leads to a negative criticism towards that culture. Gosh, if there was somone visiting California, I really would hope they wouldn't group all Californians with some of the crazies we have there!! People can just be strange. Anywhere. And that folks, is my insight for the day!