Quick hit - kawaii!!

From Jezebel: there are now more pet dogs in Japan than children under 10. Said dogs are mostly kawaii (tiny and cute) - when they're not inbred and deformed - and are pampered, adored and paraded around in prams. Like babies, only less demanding, and you can keep your job:

For Ms Horikoshi, sharing her life with dogs instead of babies is an active choice. She divorced her husband who had asked her to follow Japanese tradition and become a stay-at-home mum; she wanted to pursue her career. Her current partner has to accept that her dogs and her work are at the centre of her life.

A specialist in cataracts, Ms Horikoshi is now at the top of her profession and likes to spend her money on travel, her black Porsche and her dogs. Her friends share her choice.

"My friends - married, one poodle, no child. Married, two Chihuahuas, no child. Married, one Chihuahua, no child," she counts off her fingers.

According to ABC news (the Australian one), you can buy all sorts of stuff for them - bumble bee costumes, spa packages, silk-and-cashmere dog sweaters, kimonos, sushi, cookies... who knows what else.

Muslim women and sports

There's been quite some discussion about Saudi Arabia's ban on female athletes competing in the Olympics. Owl's recent blog post on the tensions she's encountered as a "sporty Muslima" is an interesting contribution. Excerpt:

So why is this such a taboo in the minds of so many Muslims? Well, partly I think it’s a culture clash. I notice many questioners come from ethnicities or generations where women do/did little physical activity beyond child rearing and housework, which are worthy pursuits but currently not part of my life. The idea of women wanting or enjoying sport and fitness is as foreign to them as the idea of women wanting to stay in the home all the time is to my peers. It is simply an unknown to them and they are expressing their curiosity, which is fine. Most retain an open mind and have a willingness to understand, which we all need to have.

But the rest of the complainants are men of a certain bent - men who not only disapprove of my athleticism, but also my profession, my education, and my mind. And as they cannot easily forbid me from any of those – as Islam urges education equally and allows women to earn and own – they focus on my hobby. It strikes me as a control issue, and that saddens me. I am a much more fruitful contributor to my Ummah if I am capable, strong and empowered. To be a mindless subservient would make me drain instead of a boon, and though it would probably be easier to ‘control’ me that way, it would be at a cost of the energies of my ‘controller’ and of the actualization of my own potential.

Check out the blog itself for a breakdown of the religio-cultural arguments against women exercising.

Regional cultures

A prime example of regional cultural diversity within the US, from Streetsblog:

While in DC bikes are all the rage and bike-sharing is brilliant, apparently in Michigan biking is a "transportation alternative" and bike-sharing qualifies as "bizarre news."

Pulpeuse - or, the most disturbing commercial ever

How disturbing is that commercial? Jessica over at Jezebel counts the ways, including the raunchy inter-species sex, the oddly anthropomorphized animals (a doe with breasts? a panda sans bikini?), and all the bodily fluids apparently replaced by Orangina.

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph,

The advert was based around the idea of "pulpeuse", which in French means both "containing pulp" and also "voluptuous" or "sexy".

And Orangina does have pulp, which is a sought-out quality in a fruity beverage (unlike the US, at least in my experience). So yes, I get the pun, and like most French people I appreciate the desire to capitalize that (whereas in the US puns tend to induce eye-rolling, in France jeux de mots are the highest form of humor). I'm also used to sex being used to sell pretty much anything in France - in fact I'm pretty sure you are required to show at least one nude breast if you're selling body wash, and two for yogurt. But I'm still skeeved out. Thoughts?

Science!

Ok, so maybe I've been (successfully) avoiding science classes since I was 15, but I still thought this was pretty cool (thanks Emma for sharing it!). Full story at Wired Science and the actual scienciness at PLoS ONE. It also appears that Japanese are more sensitive than Westerners to the Big Picture.

Culture shapes perception so fundamentally that it may determine the way we look at faces.

East Asians focus their gazes on the center of faces; Westerners looked to first the eyes, and then to the mouth.

The findings were produced by University of Glasgow psychologists who tracked the eye motions of observers as they looked at portraits.

The study was small and hasn't been replicated, but the differences were stark.

Other researchers have found similar differences in the perception of scenes, but never something so basic as individual faces. The phenomena could reflect a cultural mediation of individual neurobiology.

"Western society is very individualist. Asian societies are much more collectivistic," said study co-author Roberto Caldara.

From that perspective, the Western approach to facial recognition is piece-by-piece and intimate. The East Asian approach is both more formal and holistic: peripheral information is gathered, but without direct confrontation.

But is this tendency a product of a particular approach to life -- or vice versa?

"It's the chicken and the egg problem," said Caldara. "We're testing children to see whether these effects arise early in time."

The tendencies do appear plastic, he said.

"We tested some Chinese who had been in Glasgow for three or four years, and you see a clear difference between them and those who just arrived," he said. "That really demonstrates that it's not genetic. It's experience."

Caldara suspects that the East Asian approach may be more efficient, but both groups in the study proved equally adept at learning and recognizing faces.

"It's fascinating, and this is just the beginning," he said.

Caldara's next studies will involve British-born Chinese and children, but he said that the current research is already instructive.

"Culture is underestimated. The majority of papers published in psychology are based on Caucasian populations. In the future, before generalizing findings, we should be careful. Human beings are not all the same," he said.

Guess the accent

From Amanda over at Wrong Rights:

The Language Trainer's Group has posted an accent guessing game on their website. You watch people from around the world read bits of Kipling (in English), and try to guess where their accents are from.

Quick hit from Jezabel

We've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. ... [Always 'asking' For It]

from Jezebel by Megan

We've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. Many women in Egypt report being harassed by men, even when wearing the pictured niqab or the more common hijab. Seventy-two percent of the 83 percent of Egyptian women that reported being harassed say they were harassed while veiled. Conservative groups in Egypt are encouraging women to adopt hijabs or niqabs to avoid harassment, while some women say they gave it up entirely after experiencing so much harassment — and are harassed less without. Once again, the problem is never what the woman is wearing — or what she was drinking — it's what men feel inappropriately (or illegally) entitled to do about it. [Washington Post]

Stuff White People Like... where's the line?

From this week's edition of Campus Progress:

Earlier this year, Lander, a red-headed Canadian who lives and works in Los Angeles, became somewhat of an Internet celebrity when he started publishing his blog, Stuff White People Like. The site—a pseudo-anthropological study cum satire—documents what a certain type of upper-middle class, educated white person likes (dinner parties) and doesn’t like (typos on menus). Because of his blog’s popularity, Lander is now considered one of the web’s iconic embodiments of white identity.

Not everyone likes Lander’s shtick and, at the reading, he was quick to acknowledge that. But he was also quick to respond, “So let me get this straight, you’re getting angry about someone making broad generalizations about your race? Hm, I think we know some people who can probably relate.”

It was his best point of the night. Lander seemed to understand that his jokes straddle a thin line between satire and barbarity, and that, when poking fun at an entire race, context and self-awareness really matter. As Lander asserted, he skewers a privileged racial group in a “non-hateful way.” And even if some people are offended by his jokes, he said that wasn’t his intent.

...

One of the women, a teacher, admitted that the blog makes her challenge her own sense of identity, but not necessarily in a good way. Many of the things Landers says white people like are things she also enjoys. Which leads her to wonder: Does her love of coffee and sweaters make her less black?

One of the other black women noted that by identifying what is “white,” Lander is also defining what is "not white." That, she argued, can reinforce classist and racist attitudes. By claiming something elitist is by default “white,” Lander implies that such elitist affinities do not belong to other racial groups. For example, Lander claims perfect grammar as evidence of “whiteness.” If that’s true, is poor grammar a black thing? And by arguing that going to graduate school is white, isn’t Lander reinforcing assumptions about the kind of people that fill the ranks of academia?

Certainly, white people should be able to talk about “whiteness” without having to parse every aspect of their conversations. How else can we expect white people to deal with the issues that surround race relations in modern America? The problem with the folks at the book signing was that they seemed to be laughing about stereotypes without acknowledging a key component that allows racism to continue: the inability of a person in an advantageous position (like a white person) to recognize privilege.

This strikes at the problem of Stuff White People Like. Lander and company seem aware of the complications of their elitist attitudes but don’t care about changing them. It’s okay to laugh at Lander’s satire, of course, but white readers need to be self-aware and self-critical about why they are laughing, too.

As I walked out of the bookstore discussing this with the three black audience members, the young teacher said, “I’d like to see Lander give a book reading to a room full of non-white people. Somehow I think the reactions would be much different.”

First off, I should say that I'm a big fan of Stuff White People Like, and of its brother-, sister- and cousin-sites Stuff Asian People Like, Stuff Black Greeks Like, Stuff Black People Love, Stuff Desis/Brown People Like, Stuff Educated Black People Love, Stuff God Hates, Stuff Korean Moms Love, Stuff Nobody Likes, and even the very bizarre Stuff Stick Figure People Like. If there are any others out there that I'm missing - and I hope there are - please send them to me and I'll be sure to link.

Saxon Baird makes a good point that "It’s okay to laugh at Lander’s satire, of course, but white readers need to be self-aware and self-critical about why they are laughing, too." But isn't that true of most humor? Isn't it only ok to laugh at Jon Stewart and especially Stephen Colbert if you understand WHY it's funny?

Russian judge: Sexual harassment a patriotic duty

Ugh. This just creeps me out. That said, Natalia Antonova raises some good questions about the Russian/English translation and the way the Russian and Western media have been covering this.

Is Google Streeview un-Japanese?

Thanks to KT for emailing me this link to a Slashdot post about the unease that Google Streetview is apparently causing in Japan. Global Voices has the full text (with English translation) of a letter written by blogger Hisamu Oguchi, in which he explains what it is about Streetview that offends the Japanese sensibility. Some excerpts:

The residential roads of Japan's urban areas are a part of people's living space, and it is impolite to photograph a stranger's other people's living spaces.
In the United States, and particularly in the case of people living on the west coast, the boundary line between private space and public space, both in terms of actual ownership and in terms of the way people think, is in the boundary line between the public road and privately-held land. In fact, I think that you all will agree that your home's garden, which faces the street, actually feels itself more like a public space, and that not keeping your front yard tidy ruins the look of the community, right?
For people living in urban areas in Japan, though, the situation is quite the opposite. The residential street in front of a house, the so-called “alleyway” (roji/路地), feels more like a part of one's own living space, like a part of the yard. In urban areas in Japan, sweeping the road in front of one's home, sprinkling water over it, shoveling snow off it, these are all considered to be the responsibility of the resident. Wandering around the older parts of the city, you'll see evidence of this way of thinking in the potted plants and little storage rooms crowded out [onto the street].
...
To have one's own living space exposed to the whole world without ever having been asked about it beforehand, this however really makes me uncomfortable. It ignores our “right [to demand that] you leave us alone”, and comes off as nothing short of “evil”.

The comments are quite interesting, as well:

I must admit, this particular reaction to Google Maps puzzles me. It reads very much as if the writer actually believes that Street View (and the general excess of detail on Google Maps in general) is fully accepted in other nations, where it is culturally more acceptable... The real revelation here, as far as I’m concerned, is the implicit assumption that Japan is fundamentally culturally different from the rest of the world... In summary, I fully agree with the complaints here about Google Maps, but find the cultural arguments superfluous and distracting. Enough people from a wide enough variety of locales have levied these same complaints that there’s no real need to taint them with divisive red herrings like “Japan is a unique culture unlike any other on Earth” or “America is culturally imperialistic”.

Don’t want to get into an argument here, but I do take issue with your casting aside the world’s cultures as so many different “ways”. It may not be easy to define, but there is certainly a “Japanese way” whether or not every single Japanese person adheres to it is a different issue. And I tend to think that that is a good thing personally.

@Julian Stoev: “There is no Japanese way. There is also no American way, BTW.”

Wonderfully said. The letter by Osamu Higuchi posted here, like nearly all entries in the “culturally opposite ways of thinking” category, is a bunch of assertion backed by NO PROOF. Concerned people everywhere in the world have pointed out his same privacy concerns about Google Street View. While millions more around the world – including in Japan! – aren’t concerned enough to say a word. Where’s the difference? Show me EMPIRICALLY.

As a resident of Japan for over 20 years, I get so tired of “we’re so different” claims backed by nothing more than the speaker’s desperate wish for it to be true. (Unfortunately, I fear that other people will pick up on Higuchi’s blather and shout “me too!”, just because it scratches that itch for “cultural difference” posturing. )

I am always intrigued by "culture deniers," people who claim that cultural differences aren't real or are so minimal they should be ignored. For the most part, this sentiment comes from a very Western, egalitarian mindset: we are all people, we are all equal, our differences don't matter, let's not talk about them. But differences are real and carry meaning. While there are many constants across the globe (and being uncomfortable about Streetview may well be one of them!) I would also add that people can arrive to the same conclusion through different paths, in this case object to Streetview for different reasons.

Inside the mind of a DC tourist...

In quite possibly her best post yet, Liz (the new Randy) over at Why I Hate DC links to a Midwestern mom's story in The Columbus Times about her family trip to DC. Liz's post probably could have used some more vitriol, but the story itself is full of intercultural delight:

We get an early start the next day, since we discover, being the tourist-friendly city it is, many places are closed on the weekends and only open weekdays till 5. We ride to the top of the Washington Monument, visit Union Station, the Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court, where a group of young people are standing on the steps with duct tape on their mouths. I’m not sure what they’re protesting. Maybe nothing. Traveling with three teens myself, it could just be a case of some parents who’ve had enough of the whining. I totally understand.

Consider that many of the "tourist attractions" you're visiting are actually people's places of employment - Congress, for example. And those kids with duct tape are pro-lifers, I used to glare at them every day on my way to work. They're prominently featured in the scary, scary documentary "Jesus Camp."

We stop to buy souvenir T-shirts from a street vendor with marginal English. Five for ten bucks, making me realize once again, is this a great country or what?
...
While the kids pop in at the Hard Rock Cafe, I look at trinkets, like a White House Christmas ornament and a miniature Washington Monument, all made in China. Is it just me, or is that just wrong?

Ah, the irony. Do you think your T-shirts were so cheap because they were made in North Carolina by adult workers making a living wage?

By day three the kids are navigating the subway and city streets like old pros. My daughter though, is puzzled by the fact that everyone walks on moving escalators up and down the subways, whereas we treat them more like amusement park rides.

Clearly they are not. And yes, we walk on escalators, we're trying to get to work. So please walk or get out of the way. How would you like it if I treated your minivan like a go-kart?

Ouagastreet Journal

Here's a job for you.  Push a hotdog cart up and down the busiest streets of the city at 2 p.m. in mid July with not a cloud in the sky.  Do it all day long.  Except, instead of selling hot dogs from the cart put and incased glass box with shelves of panties and bras. Most girls I know can't even count the times that they were walking down 2nd street and wished that some sweaty man was there to sell them some undies right in front of everyone.  Alas, this was the plight of poor Solomon.  He was a man I met across from my neighborhood doing exactly what I have described.  Except, I guess I live in more of a suburbia setting and it was about 110 outside.  Solomon seemed to be up beat though.  We joked around a little and he was understanding that I didn't want to buy any panties.  He just kind of smiled and said it wasn't easy and it was bad.  I didn't know what to say so I just told him good luck.

People here in Ouagadougou (and most of West Africa) will sell almost anything they can get their hands on here.  They'll either carry it to you or be a roadside vender. When I say "carry it to you" I mean that they seem like they have the attitude that you didn't want to  I like the time a guy walked up to me and tried selling me some g-string style tighty whities and some napkins.  I wonder if he just drew the short straw that morning or if he actually has been trying to sell those things for 3 years now.  I can't imagine who would buy them.  Well, I could see buying some napkins, but nut huggers?  No.  

My personal favorite is when I'm waiting outside of a club on the main strip and all the walking vendors come up to me to show me what I could take with me to the club that night.  I try to picture myself in the club dancing while holding on to things like two foot carved statues, leather sacks, picture frames, and spears.  I love it.  I'm having a beer right outside of a club and someone wants to sell me a spear at about midnight.  I'll like to smack the tourist that bought things in this situation and made the venders think it was a good idea.  

The bootleg DVD guys are every where.  They are there outside of cafe restaurants, clubs, and even the supermarket.  Each DVD comes with multiple movies.  Most of the movies are movies like The Marine with Jon Cena or other movies that went straight to TNT weekday time slots.  For the 20 movies on the DVD there are usually one or two okay ones though.  They always offer you some of the very best African porn.  I think every supermarket should have a guy selling porn to those who look like they could be in need of it.  That way, porn lovers everywhere wouldn't have to deal with the embarrassment of going into the "back room" of Blockbuster's.  

Buying things here can be fun and it can be frustrating.  If you buy from the street you can get a cheaper price than a store, but you run the risk of it not working because it was made in China.  Chinese stuff here is even cheaper than stuff that comes to the states.  I bought a pair of hair clippers on the street here.  Of course, they didn't work and with I took it apart to see why I saw that it was actually made with peices that were designed either to not work or break.  I found a foam spounge wedged between the plastic peice that was supposed to move the metal clipper head.  Good 'ol China business and its dirty ways.  Most of the bikes here are chinese too and I've seen first hand how they fall apart piece by piece and that's all I hear from the people that buy them.

Another way its frustrating is trying to haggle down from white prices.  I say white prices, but they know if you have money or not and if you do they start the haggling price out at amazingly bad prices.  For those clippers, the guy started out at $100.  No shame.  I talked him down to $30, but I still shouldn't have payed more than $20 for him.  It was just that I was surrounded by 20 smelly guys all trying to sell me things at once in 100 degree weather.  I was ready to get out of there.  People will say "My friend, my friend.  I give you good price.  Only one arm and a leg.  Good price because you my friend."  They really don't say an arm and a leg, but they might as well.  Assholes.  Turns out that you're really not their friend and they will lie to you through their teeth to get your money.  

Since I'm telling you about the negative I have to throw in a positive.  My mango lady was a sweety.  She had the best mangos in town and never once tried to over charge me.  As a matter of a fact, she would always throw in a free banana or small mango (I only bought the large ones).  She knew that if she was good to me I would pass up the other mango ladies and come to her.  She was a smart lady business lady because that's exactly what I did.  On a sad side note,  I'm talking about in past tense because its not mango season anymore.  I don't know when they are coming back, but my guess is that it won't be soon enough.

The fun part about bartering is that it makes shopping into an exciting experience when you're in the mood for it.  There are always 3 phone card guys waiting outside of the ATM.  When I go to get money out of the ATM booth they slyly wait outside like calm paranas before I stick my hand in the water.  When I come out I litteraly have to push them out of my bubble as I stand undecisive while they push each other like on black friday at Toys R Us.  Sometimes I take one of their cards and sometimes I walk past them to the guy who is waiting patiently behind them and buy his card.  Either way, I'm a stinker and they're a little crazy about selling those cards.  I don't blame them though.  People gotta eat.  

Quick hint from the WSJ

The Juggle had a neat blurb about blended families yesterday. Be sure to check out the comment threads.

Harassment, piropos and hollering back

Feministing's first Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah highlighted the New York City MTA's new ads encouraging victims of random ass-grabbings and other forms of harassment to report it - the idea being that you wouldn't tolerate it at work or at school, you shouldn't have to tolerate it on your commute.


This made me think of my college study abroad in Santiago de Chile, when street harassment (called "piropos" in Chilean), along with other factors, drove me into a pretty serious depression. I actually put on a good 15 pounds in less than 4 months in a failed attempt to get males to stop noticing me. Notice that I say males, not just men. I once had an old man point me out as "potuta" (nice assed) to his 12 year old grandson. The kid then winked at me and yelled "chupamelo princesa" (suck me, princess). Abuelo beamed with pride.

That is no way to start a workday.

I eventually learned some profanities at my own - not that it changed anything, but it did make me feel better. What did not make me feel better was my host mom's indifference to my complaints - she told me that when I got to be her age (50) and lost my looks, I would wish that men still shouted piropos at me!

Has anyone had similar experiences? Do you think that public service ad campaigns like MTA's can help change the cat-call culture?

8.8.08

In light of today's most auspicious date, I have a few thoughts on China and the Olympics:

I recently (okay, maybe it was about 6 weeks ago) returned from a week-long stint in Shanghai for work. It was probably one of the most interesting experiences I've had thus far. As best I can tell, there are not a lot of solitary black American women running around the hoity-toity foreigner part of Shanghai where we stayed. As I mentioned earlier, I was there on business, and my business involved meeting the head of a Chinese manufacturing company, and visiting some factories. One of the factories was used to having visitors come in and wander around, the other was not. I noticed at both places, I was subject to extra scrutiny as our group (which was about half white and half Chinese, with a couple of South Asians) toured the factory floor and grounds. No one was rude, mind you, there was just a bit more staring and whispered commentary in my direction.

I went to one of the old silk markets with two co-workers, and there, it was even more eerie. People stopped in the street, pointed and blatantly stared. For some reason (please enlighten me if you know) it was mostly older women. Older men and younger people didn't seem to notice, or gave me a passing glance. It was the little old ladies who stopped and stared, or tried to touch me (anyone who knows me will tell you I have an inordinate phobia of strangers in my personal space.)

My conclusion (which may be way off base) was this:
Much like many places in America, the residents of Shanghai are not exposed to a lot black people- in the streets, on television, or otherwise. And much like any sort of cultural thing, the earlier generations tend to have less exposure than the younger generations. Furthermore (I should have mentioned earlier- the factories were 1-3 hours outside Shanghai proper) people outside cities have less exposure than those in less urban areas.

Oddly enough, the whole thing reminded me of something someone (now a very close friend) told me during the first days of my freshman year of college. After a week spent at adult summer camp (drinking and partying to the wee hours, hitting the gym and having hungover meals in the dining hall), she looked at me and said "I've never met anyone like you." I asked her what she meant, and she replied "You're smart, you speak proper English, you don't try to be stupid. Where I'm from, there aren't any black people like that."

Moving onto the Olympics-
I know they're always staged and weird, but it gives me the heebie-jeebies seeing how incredibly staged Beijing 2008 seems. There is a front page article in today's Financial Times about China's massive "weather modification departments"- they employ 37,000 people, and have an annual budget of about $100 million. In that article I came across this quote:

"A senior official from the weather modification office in the northern province of Hubei, which is trying to intercept bad weather before it gets to Beijing, says it is not even keeping track of spending on the effort for the Games. 'Nobody is thinking about this at the moment - we'll consider it after the mission.'"

From the weather, to the displaced people, to articles like this one from the New York Times, detailing how many migrant workers have been ordered out until after the games, the whole dog and pony show creeps me out. Then again, maybe it's because I'm just killing time until football season starts.

In case you're interested, today's Financial Times comes with a great little magazine about the Beijing Games and the business of sport, and last week's Economist has an examination of the same, although less Olympics-centered.

In other news, Georgia and Russia are almost at war over South Ossetia, and Mauritania had a bloodless coup, in case anyone noticed.

[UPDATE: Now it is war.]

Thirsty Black Boy

Another quick hit, via Racialicious:

I recently came across the above campaign, produced by Mortierbrigade Brussel, an ad agency in Belgium.

MediaBistro notes:

To attract attention for the cause, a young boy dressed in shorts and a tank top could be seen running into prime time TV shows (live programs, with hosts) only to drink the water that sat in front of the hosts, or their guests. The boy chugged the water and ran off.

In three days, the boy had been on enough programs that a stir was created. In just six days, people donated the equivalent of $5.24 million dollars. Considering the relatively small size of Belgium, that’s no small feat.

The viral piece was meant to highlight the disparaging situation for the 1.1 billion people that don’t have clean water, and the fact a child dies every 15 seconds from a lack of clean water. The agency’s client ‘Music for Life’ and their partner, The Red Cross, did more for clean water in a week than anyone could have imagined.

(It is also interesting to note that Media Bistro took the word “Black” out of the title when reporting the piece.)

Take a look, tell us what you think. I, much like Latoya, find it interesting that MediaBistro took the word "black" out of the piece.

Bloggers wanted!

Third culture kid? Expat? Bicultural? Bilingual? Minority? Invisible minority? Aspiring writer/blogger? We're looking for you! The Interculturalists are looking for new voices to join our discussion on culture, identity, assimilation, travel, and life as a global citizen. No topic is taboo, we just ask that you look at issues from an intercultural communication perspective and keep it civil. No minimum blogging requirements, either - so if you're looking for a platform for your material, we'd love to help you out!
If you're interested, please post a comment with your email address to this post. It will go into a moderation queue, and I promise to remove any personally identifying information before making the post public.
Material in languages other than English is welcome, by the way, though we'll most likely make an English translation available.

Adopting America's Bad Habits

This article in the WaPo today highlights a phenomenon that I've long thought was a root cause of chronic health problems related to unsustainable lifestyle. When immigrants come to the US, they leave behind the physical manifestations of their culture but not the habits and mindsets associated with them. For example,

Instead of weeding fields and walking long distances, which make you burn too many calories, you vacuum floors and take buses, which make you tired and lazy. Instead of cooking rice and beans, which lack many vitamins, you stop off for pizza and fries, which have too much fat. Instead of catching tropical infections, you are at greater risk of developing diabetes and heart disease.

New immigrants typically lack knowledge of healthful behaviors that can counter unhealthy lifestyle:

"In my country, if you are thin, people think you are not healthy, but here it is too easy to get fat," Sosa said. "Americans sit in offices and drive everywhere, but then they go to the gym. We do the hard work, but we don't get any exercise. We need to get more educated and think in a different way. We are not in Guatemala now."

Passing through the middle east

Great piece of travel writing/intercultural musings on the fluidity of identity. Check it out.

Where in the world...

In case you're wondering why I haven't been posting... the past month has been rather hectic with two weeklong trips and a relatively sudden (though happy and exciting!) job change, so my reading/thinking/blogging time has been rather limited. That said I'm back in town and starting to settle into a new routine so just be a patient a short while longer! Also, it seems like the readership of this blog is expanding significantly beyond people I know in real life, and I'd love to hear from you, so please post! If you have a related site or blog I'll be happy to link to it if you'll return the favor. A bientot!