Culturally Relative

This week in sociology we studied cultural differences around the world. One thing we talked about was the different hand gestures that people make. Sal mentioned the gesture/sound the Japanese make when they are embarrassed or don't want to say no. My student teacher in french is Asian. He has only been in the U.S. for a couple of years. Everyday in class he always does that gesture/sound Sal showed us. He does it when we asked him question that he possibly didn't know the answer to or when he was just simply thinking. All of us were really confused about that gesture. We were also starting to get a little annoyed too because it happened every day more than once. However, now, I understand it and respect it. I know that he is nervous when he teaches and his way of teaching is so different from the way we are used to. His way of expressing uncertainty or embarrassment is normal for his culture, but it isn't normal for us. I guess I was being a little ethnocentric by mocking his hand gestures, but now that I understand what it means, I am culturally relative. Everybody has different ways of communication- writing, speaking, and using hand gestures. Every culture also has different norms. We talked about all the different kinds of toilets in class. When I was in France, I noticed that the bathroom is separate from the actually toilet. The toilet room is just a small room with only a toilet and that is it. The bathroom has everything else. It took a while to get used to it. I would go to the bathroom to expect a toilet but realize the real toilet is across the hall. When I think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If you translate the word "bathroom" literally it means I room to bathe in, not do your business in. That is why in France, you ask 'ou est les toilettes? meaning where are the toilets. If you want to ask for the bathroom, you use a different expression. All these other countries- France, Japan- they are so much cleaner than the U.S. Wow, we should really learn from those countries and transform our "bathrooms" into clean and germ-free places.