What is Culture? What is my Culture?

Culture:

-    "The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations."

-   "The set of shared attitudes,values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization."

Here is how I see American culture: American culture is similar to many countries but it is also very different. Culture in America is very diverse, and often referred to as the "melting pot". It is called this because of the many different religious groups, values, backgrounds, languages, foods, traditions...etc. Everyone expresses themselves differently, most Americans are friendly and talkative, but also have strong opinions, are independent and individualistic. These characteristics are formed because of the rights of the United States. Culture in Huntsville is much like the rest of the country...it is diverse! But common things most people enjoy doing is watching sports such as football, eating out with friends and family, attending social gatherings, and much more. What is distinct about the culture in America is that we are able to have such strong cultures and mixes of cultures because of our independence, equality, freedom.

Culture shock:  Three years ago I went on a family vacation to Puerto Rico. The first two days we stayed inside the resort. The resort was beautiful, the beaches were beautiful, everyone was very kind. Then one day we went out of the resort to go on a hike at the el Yunque Rainforest, as we were traveling up to the rainforest we noticed how different Puerto Rico was in and out of the resort, how impoverished it was, how it was not as sanitary or clean. The same thing happened when we went to Saint Thomas. While we were in Saint Thomas we were told how  unsafe the streets were. A man working at a store who used to live in the United States told my family and I how different security was here, how the cops did not work as hard to protect its citizens and how we should not take our security for granted.