Tag - culture shock

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Friday, April 6 2012

Empathy, Culture and the Words You Use

Lara604, Latte Heart 2, March 24, 2009, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lara604/3630689319/

Je suis une empathique. De base, de tout coeur et jusqu'au bout de mes orteils. Pourtant, j'ai beaucoup de mal avec certaines personnes, notamment issues de la culture nord-américaine, qui abusent de mots teintés d'empathie et leur font perdre leur force. Je me suis trouvée dans plusieurs situations de communication où l'utilisation d'un discours empathique m'a fait me poser la question de savoir si la personne qui l'émettait n'était pas en train d'essayer de m'endormir à coup de positif et bons sentiments, une situation où l'utilisation de mots qui ont leur origine dans les sentiments n'étaient pas "ressentis" mais "pensés".

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Monday, January 17 2011

What Is Your Single Story?

A few weeks ago, I watched a fantastic talk by Chimamanda Adichie about "The Danger of A Single Story". The talk is a year old, but the message is ageless. It made me think about what my stories of "single stories" are. I have a few, actually, here is one that particularly struck  […]

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Monday, August 4 2008

My Very First Culture Shock

I remember one of my first culture shocks very vividly. I probably had others before, but this one was the start of a long series, and most importantly the first I actually recalled over time. I arrived in the US for a 2-year stay at the age of 15.So here I am, on evening in Albuquerque, New Mexico,  […]

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Saturday, July 26 2008

I Am Not One of Them

Via Olivier, in Ici & Ailleurs, I discovered La lanterne brisée some time ago. And the first post I read was one called Regards, which means Looks (as in gaze, not as in what you look like). I won't translate the whole cartoon, but know that basically, the main character (the author) is in Japan  […]

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Tuesday, January 29 2008

Holy state! the Church got me (again)

Well, here is the sequel to my very interesting story about the German Church getting a hold of me. Actually, I probably need to rectify something. It is not so much the Church that got me, but the German State. So let me explain the next steps. When I saw that the Finanzamt (Tax office) was ready  […]

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