Katelyn_CP_IE_#2

Today (Jan 22) in Ramin's speaking class, we expanded more on the "tip of the iceberg" analogy. He passed out a very useful handout with a number of topics to discuss and then had us TEFL students grab a pair of CIES students--this was much smoother than last week, which I was very appreciative of.
I was partnered with Joanna, who I remembered from last week, and Alicia, who is from Venezuela. We had a good time talking about cultural differences and what we all believed to be "observable" vs. "hidden" behaviour. I had to laugh because Josh gave the example of Brazilians having a difference concept of time and arriving late much of the time--Joanna told me this wasn't true at all, in her experience. We also came up with new topic missing from the list: family values. We decided that a person's family values can usually be observable, as you can often tell when someone has a strong relationship with their family--both Joanna and Alicia spoke very passionately about how close they are with their mothers. It can be observed by how much time a person spends with their family members; it can also be seen in how little time someone spends with their family, we decided.  seemed to agree heavily on all the topics, including facial expressions/gestures/styles, music, and interacting with the opposite gender--both girls told me they were very cautious when with a male that they did not know. We all agreed that these were mostly observable behaviours.
We also agreed that values were very low on the "iceberg"'s base, as they are usually very invisible in people even after you begin to "break the ice" and get to know them.
The second activity was discussing how "below-the-surface culture" affects the "above-the-surface culture." We thought that religious beliefs (observable) will heavily affect child raising beliefs and family values, as well as other observable traits such as clothing, gender interaction, music, and eating habits (such as fasting). We also said how modesty could affect eating habits--Alicia said that when she's at a friend's house, she doesn't eat much out of politeness, which I found interesting. If I go to a friend's house and they cook me dinner, I would eat a lot to be polite, I said.
I found myself agreeing to most of their opinions--just about everything they had mentioned was something I believed too. It was an interesting conversation to hear where they would place traits on the iceberg; I personally think that concept of leadership would be higher on a person's iceberg, as, to me, it's usually pretty apparent quickly how they treat somebody in a higher position.