'Intercultural communication with the peterson family Essay\r'

'After a year of livelihood with my brother, I moved in to live with the Peterson family in Montclair, calcium. Jason Peterson was a physics professor at the Univer perplexy of California at Berkeley while Mary Peterson was a schoolteacher. livelihood with the Peterson family made me grapple with the difference between American and Afghan culture. The American way of expressing affection in public and open intimate relationships at jump shocked me. Afghans are in truth private and cloistered when it comes to displays of affection.\r\nKissing your wife or girlfriend in front of others would be a serious disclose of manners. The expression of affection between Jason and Mary when nonpareil of them arrived from work used to make me uncomfortable only if I solventually got used to it. I shut away find it truly paradoxical that while Americans openly display affections, the value they accord to privacy and personal space is very high. I could non dig out why they value privacy when in event they could not go for intimate shows of affection in private.\r\nAt first, I would often innocently overstep into the room of Jason to ask nearthing. Or, when he was deep in thought in the living room grappling iron with what visualiseed like a work-related task, I would t dolessly last a conversation with him. In situations like those, his chemical reaction would be one of sign shock. Sensing that my act was prompted by my desire to express belonging with the Peterson family, Jason would suspension into a knowing smile. I knew he could liveliness my overplus, as I did with his own embarrassment for his initial show of displeasure.\r\nBecoming aware of the discomfort I caused in those situations, I eventually resolved to keep my distance in those situations and to respect privacy concord to American standards. Like most Americans, Mr. Peterson was direct and to the send when discussing matters with his wife. With me, however, he chose to make me learn Ame rican well-disposed norms through his reaction to what I did or what I was doing. I took cues from his reaction and I was certain that he simply did not want me to feel mortified of my actuations. After a month, we got to sit down in concert from time to time.\r\nHe started asking me about Afghanistan. cosmos given the chance to share with him the life and ethnical practices in Afghanistan seemed to unburden me. Through our conversations, he began to see me in a different light and I am grateful that those conversations did happen. I too began to extrapolate and accept American culture for what it is. At first, whenever I encountered a seemingly weird American rule from the Afghan viewpoint, I would automatically and mentally mooch for a similar custom of Afghanistan and attempt to correspond them.\r\nI eventually realized that this automatic military rating of American culture that I usually do as some sort of a physiological reaction action is a contributory itemor to my apology to some aspects of American culture and may by chance even be a hindrance to my assimilation of the host culture. Even if I was close to Mr. Peterson on account of our â€Å"cultural conversations,” I maintained tangible and emotional distance from Mrs. Peterson. In hindsight, I also realize that such aloofness on my sectionalisation did not spring from the fact I did not like her.\r\nIn fact she was such a very gracious and accommodating lady that sometimes her concern embarrassed me. I still unconsciously carried with me the Afghan notion that another man’s wife or female children are forth limits to others. Afghan strictures relating to the marriage bond are lots more demanding than those of Americans. Perhaps I was apprehensive that Mr. Peterson would look at my attempts to communicate with his wife from an Afghan standpoint. In this case, I was on the losing end. I could have had a more profound communication level with Mrs.\r\nPeterson as I had wit h her husband if only I did not have such an apprehension at the keystone of my mind. The American concept of personal space was something that I could not comprehend at all. For Afghans, one’s family lapseed to almost all relatives unlike the very exclusive nuclear family of Americans. This extends to the use of gadgets and other family line items. When my Afghan friends came to visit me in the residence of the Peterson family, some of my Afghan friends unconsciously behaved as though the family that I was with was Afghan.\r\nThey engaged in horseplay and laughed boisterously which did not sit well with the Petersons, using their reaction as basis. I cautioned my friends who, to my relief, took my admonition seriously. When they all became very quiet on account of my warning, the atmosphere became unbearably silent. The Peterson couple feel the sudden change of mood and in their embarrassment took pains to make me and my friends feel welcome. Such an event would not have happened if my friends and I had been conscious of the fact that the American concept of family and belonging did not extend to friends and relatives, the way the Afghan concept does.\r\n'