Day 6
Day 6 - 11 February 2009
Culture? Easy!
Our workshop deals with how culture affects people and how they interact with family and strangers. The group brainstormed about the elements of culture and what an intercultural expert is. And come up with a number of topics. First we found that food, sports and how people interact between each other would be a good starting point to build the workshop around. Secondly we began to discuss what skills and knowledge an intercultural expert needs. Our conclusion was that an intercultural expert is a person who adopts and explores new culture and learns how to interact within a new culture, and accepts the various differences between cultures and also has at least a basic knowledge of the history of the country he/she is exploring. We decided to use two questionnaires to look into food, sports, non verbal communications and traditions.
We divided the workshop into two groups to gather information from the people on Achill and in our international group. The first group with the questions about behaviour went to the local supermarket where they found a number of Achill inhabitants who were glad to help out with our survey. The second group got the tip of going down to the beach where they can meet a number of people from Achill and in the surroundings. The workshop got together later the same evening around 5pm to conclude their findings and discuss the cultural aspects of the project that have come up so far. We have learnt that the Irish people are open minded and willing to talk to everyone about almost everything. Topics that should be avoided are politics and religion when talking to strangers. With all the data our workshop had the luck to gather we are now preparing for the final presentation which will take some time to finish. We have thoroughly gone through our findings again and had some new data from the participants of the project “Borrowing Identities”. With the new information we have completed our research and begun to work on the final presentation.
Hugo Tenga (British group)
Cultural Glasses
What do you think about a man sitting on a chair and eating some sweets, while a woman is kneeing on the floor and looking at the bottom?
-This was a part of Janina's and David's role play at the lunchtime lecture “stereotypes” on Wednesday. The participants had the task to analyse their behaviour and to write down what they see.”This must be a woman from an Arabic country“,”She looks like a slave” and “I would like to help her”- were the interpretation of the students. Almost everybody put his “cultural glasses” on and categorized the acting in his own view. During life, every human creates stereotypes. These are influenced by environment, especially the family,education and friends. So the participants thought that the man oppresses the woman. In fact, Janina and David were playing people from the society of Albatros where women are very highly respected. Men have the duty to taste all food to make sure it is save. The woman was kneeing, because she wanted to have the most contact to their Goddess of Earth, which is the highest in Albatros.
So we have to change our acting in putting other countries in drawers. Cultures and their behaviour are different. We have to open our mind and first think about strange situations before we rush things.
Michael Vogel (German group)
No taboo
Amazing!
The tour around the island was very fascinating. We have seen a lot of nature, small villages, entertainment places, churches, schools, administrative services and so on. We have stopped few times at the most beautiful places in Achill to enjoy the Atlantic sea witch looked a strong mysterious power crashing into the rocks.
During the tour we were listening to stories about island history, economics, famous people, religion and other basic facts. The island furthermore was an inspiration for such famous painters as Paul Henry, Robert Henray. Attracted by the amazing scenery German writer Heinrich Böll lived in the island as well. At the end of the tour we could feel the spirit of the island standing on a pirate tower feeling the air in our faces and we were transferred to those times when life was real burden. We will always remember the island and it’s sure we come back some day.
Jovita Sveikataité (Lithuanian group)
