Adapting to New Culture

This week, we read an article called 'Bemused in America' by Dtefan Schirmer. In this article, Schirmer talks about how different American culture is from European culture, specifically in Germany. For example, he watches Americans jog outside and doesn't quite understand the concept. He wonders why Americans feel the need to jog outside? That doing a sport should mean you want to be healthy, but jogging outside means your intaking the pollution which is terrible for you. Although he made a good point, what he didn't catch onto was how obsessed Americans are with their appearance. They'll exercise until they're satisfied with themselves or until they see a progressive change. This was considered culture shock to Schirmer because he wasn't used to how Americans exercised or better yet why they worked out alone. Our normal daily routines that we regularly perform may be impossible to follow for a foreigner. When I had a friend that visited from Atlanta, Georgia she found it odd that my friends and I were so involved with school. She claimed that nobody at her school was spirited and that they never found football games fun. As soon as I took her to one of our football games, she was surprised to see how many people were in the stands wearing our school colors and being supportive. Since Atlanta, Georgia isn't that far away, you'd assume that it wouldn't be so much of a culture shock. Especially knowing that we're the same age, just attending different high schools. You'd be surprised because their atmosphere is completely different from ours.