wawa sandwich meets a culture basher!

okay so earlier today i  went to get my favorite sandwich at wawa and as i was waiting for mine to be made i could not help but hear the sandwich making employee talkiing very loudly to her coworker. She was talking about her cousins who live in Naples, Italy. She said that everytime they come to visit it is so annoying because all they do is complain about how fat and rufe americans are. Then she added that they were qp times more annoying simply because they are italian. and finally she said she hates when they come because they can not understand that the rules in Italy are not the same as here in the us. I just thought it was hilarious how she was so blunt about all of this, it seemed about as stereotypical american as you can get! not to mention, i wanted my sandwich and she was just blabbing away with no care in the world! i guess im pretty American too....

Clever Commercial!

Okay so the other day I saw this commercial for the first time and I thought it was really funny and clever! Like I would totally love to do that to my kids if I had them! But today my Grandmother was talking about this commercial and she thought it was a disgrace that anyone would ever do that to their kids! So I guess that shows the differences between a 15 year old and a 65 year old.....and I kinda think it has to do with the way both of us were brought up in such different time periods!

Easter :)

Today I got to thinking about how strange our holidays are in the US. If you think about it, a whole lot of people here celebrate Easter here, but I'm pretty sure many of them don't even believe in the religious aspect. It's all about the egg hunts and bunnies! Then think about how we tell our young kids that some huge rabbit drops off a basket full of goodies for them on Easter, like seriously what is that? Where does that come from? I'm pretty interested. But either way, most businesses and schools have Easter breaks of some sort, which I still don't really get! Americans just loveee time off I suppose.

Prom!

On Friday night I attended CSW's prom. and it was my first prom ever. Going into it I had pretty high expectations and I was thinking it was going to be sooo much fun, but afterwards I realized it really was not all I had expected. I think that TV shows and movies depict prom as being the best night ever or just being wonderful, yet the image they portray is a little skewed. I mean I'm not saying it was horrible or that I did not enjoy myself, because that's not the case, it just felt different than how I thought it would. It was over so quick and then I was like whoa, it's over? I don't know, it was just a weird feeling. I think that's another example of how the media in America is not always accurate, they tend to exaggerate a bit I would say. Oh well, it reallly was an awesome experience, I just expected something more!

Competition

I definitely think it's safe to say that America thrives and largely revolves around competition. Whether it's sports, academics, or business, the average American tends to desire to be ahead of everyone around them-their competitors. I mean at Charter it's no secret that most of the students would like to be earning higher grades or honors than other certain classmates. We all want to be the smartest! And then you have commercial examples, like when you see five different coffee shops all within a mile of one another on the road. Each shop advertises their own special deals or sales in hopes that they'll catch the majority of consumer's attentions. All of this is normal to us because we see it every single day. I sometimes wonder what it'd be like if competition were not a factor, and every business were government owned and standardized. I feel like it'd be pretty boring! One thing I recently noticed during a two mile race I ran at a meet was that passing my competitors is seriously so much fun. I have no idea how I disregarded this feeling before, but now all I want to do is go faster and pass people instead of just passively be passed. Maybe our society relates to this, they must realize how gratifying it is to be stronger than others too, not in a mean way though of course!

Twinkie minion cupcakes= easy entertainment!

Today my older brother, who is almost 18, decided he, his girlfriend, and I were going to make some really cool cupcakes. They were themed after the minion characters from the movie "Despicable Me" and they turned out aboslutely adorable! Once we finished our decorating, all three of us were so proud and felt so accomplished.. When I realized just how satisfied we were with our cupcakes, it occurred to me how easily entertained we could be. I think this actually speaks for the majority of America's teenagers, the littlest things can give us hours of laughs or fun, which I think is great.I also realized how lucky we are that we have the ability to do little fun things like this whenever we want to. There are so many people out there who would never be able to do that. So I guess even though in America our culture may seem all business at first glance, we know how to enjoy ourselves too, at least while we're still young. Oh,, and the cupcakes were delicious too!

Time Time Time

I always seem to blog about what happens in culture identity class, and I'm doing it again! I guess it's just because we talk about some really thought provoking topics sometimes, things that are really really hard to truly wrap your head around, and it kind of drives me crazy! So this past week, the big thing that we talked about was time. I prefer to just not think about how we as humans created time and things like that, and just take it for what it is- days, hours, minutes, whatever. But then I realized that we really have created this concept of time, and in America especially, we allow it to completely control us! That's pretty insane, I sort of wish we could actually control it a little better, and go back in time or pause it, that would be pretty cool. Another thing I noticed was that during our "time" discussion, our teacher was asking us questions instead of giving us information, which was very difficult for me beacuse I like to just be given the info from my teacher, and that is that. So very Charter of me, I must say. I guess I have a very hard time being creative when it comes to learning in the classroom. I should work on that too!