Cultural Shock

In class, we had played a card game in groups of five and Sal sneakily changed the rules of the game for each table and didn't allow us to talk, only use gestures and grunts, which caused much confusion among the tables as to why select people in the groups did not play with the same set of rules as everyone else sitting at the table. He began to explain to us how this applies to real life situations when people are not used to the culture of others. So when it hits them when they go to an unfamiliar country, they get what is called culture shock. It is because of culture shock that people in Manhattan were so appalled when a Danish mother left her child outside of a restaurant. If more people had been culturally aware, I think people kwould have been more understanding when this woman had left your child in a stoller outside the restaurant. They would have understood that in her culture, it is appropriate to do so and then more people would have been forgiving to the fact. The only culture shock experience that i can rememebr is wehn i went to visit Ireland last December. Given I used to live there and I have family back there not everything about the culture was that surprising since I also experience most of it everyday at hoe from my father. This time, since I was a little bit older, I was able to go out on my own more with my cousins who are around my age. I was out to dinner with my cousin Aoife when we saw a little boy (he looked about the age of 14) holding a beer and eating dinner with his parents! Not only did i find this funny at the time, but completely bizarre! Back at home of course people underage drink in college all the time, but 14 year old boys don't seem to and especially not in a public place. My cousin explained to me how a lot of Europe was like this: they had laws for drinking ages, but they weren't enforced often. It was not a big deal to anyone else that the adolescent boy was having a beer with dinner. I guess you could say that was a bit of a "culture shock" to me since I was raised in a culture were they was not only not acceptable, but illegal until a certain age, and even then, was to be used with caution passed a certain point.