Culture!

 All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I was in my American History class; we currently are doing an immigration unit. To think how much many cultures have to assimilate to America's society is incredible. To leave your native country, where you can find yourself at home with all your believes and traditions ( for the most part) and come here and incorporate those into your new life is a lot of change. Although the assimilation process doesn't occur with every immigrant population in American like we saw in the move My Big Fat Greek Wedding; it surely is seen more often. This all got me thinking and I asked my grandparents what it was like to come to America and their reactions were culture shock and culture clash. They described to me that they felt very odd eating some of the food like peanut butter and jelly, and Fluff ( which is a marshmallow like paste). My grandparents were farmers in Cuba and they were not used to seeing so much technology and when they came to America they were in awe. They also didn't speak the language which was a huge barrier for the obvious reasons. For the most part they assimilated well, however they do miss their original home land;but don't which to go back because of the type of government found in Cuba. 


 My grandparents had culture shock when they ate fluff and peanut butter and jelly. Specially fluff because they just thought it was a gross thing and that it tasted bad. They also thought it was wrong that in the American culture most of the families don't live as close to each other as they do in Cuba. Culture clash was when they came to America and were not able to speak the language and didn't know how to use all the technology . My grandparents didn't come here with much ethnocentrism, because they were accepting of the new culture. They were more of a subculture, because although they keep their Cuban roots very strong they still are able to assimilate to America's culture very well. Culture is a barrier itself , because since we don't understand all the cultures in the world we are quick to judge with our culture shock and create misunderstandings.