Quite often in the United States when we go for a meal, or even at home when we eat a meal, we go through the meal rather quickly. We do not seem to really focus much on the meal itself and what we are eating or even potentially the people we are eating with, but rather seem to want to get done with the meal in order to move on to the next task we have to do in our day to day. Of course this is something that is probably due to the very efficiency-focused culture of the United States and it is no doubt necessary sometimes when you have something you must do at a certain time.
Personally though, I interact with this aspect of the United States’ culture in a few different ways. I certainly do experience this daily when going to a restaurant or eating at home because meals tend to take less than an hour, people are focused on finishing the meal and getting to do something else. I personally experience this at restaurants as well in how members of my family or people I know will get impatient when they think the meal has taken too long to get out to them. But, at the same time I also come from a family that holds large get-togethers for extended parts of my family, that while featuring a meal, occurs over hours and is focused almost entirely on the extended parts of the family and how this meal gives you a chance to interact with that extended portion of the family. Personally, that is the type of meal that I prefer, I want to be able to use the meal as an opportunity to talk and to interact with those people that I care about, instead of almost just an intermission between different parts of the day.
All that said though, a person from another country, while this is of course dependent on what type of culture this person comes from, would probably see this as odd or very different, and possibly a waste of what a meal could be, and I would probably agree with them. Much of this is probably due to simply the different cultures that they and I are coming from and how it can be very difficult to immerse yourself and reach an understanding of another person’s culture and the reasons for why the US considers meals this way. We all have our own cultural biases and experiences that we are coming from and while that makes different cultures beautiful and unique, it can also sometimes make them hard to understand, looking at them from the outside.
All in all, though, I think this exercise has really helped me to think about how the culture of Greece, where I will be studying in, will be different from the culture of the United States and the ideals that I hold as normal. Also, it has gotten me to think more about how I will be able to interact with that culture that I hopefully will be immersing myself in.