For our second cultural workshop, Mr. Kaminski had the TEFL
and CIES students fill out a worksheet that asked us to identify “shallow” and “deep”
aspects of culture and how they might be related. The worksheet used a graphic
of an iceberg to visualize the concept, and he explained to us that often part
of culture that “above the water” (that is, the things we can see and hear and
touch), have deeper connections to parts of culture that are “below the
surface.” With our group, we looked through a list of aspects of culture
(holiday traditions, religion, gender roles, food, concepts of modesty) and
decided whether they were above the surface, below the surface, or both. For
example, how people in a culture dress and present themselves is easily
observed, but the underlying beliefs that guide these behaviors are not
necessarily so obvious. Hassan explained a little bit about how Ramadan is
observed in Saudi Arabia and the reasons behind the fasting, and Ankita brought
up that there was also an observation of a holy month in her own country, with similar
reasons for fasting.
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