I’ve been wanting to write about the culture in other countries for a while now but wanted to wait until I actually started traveling to do so. I’m in Spain at the moment and have had just a ton of observations and interesting little insights into Spanish culture, the psyche and habits of its people, and the country in general.
These sort of things aren’t strictly language-learning, hence I’ve held off writing about them on my current Spanish-learning blog, How to Learn Spanish. I know that although most people who are interested in learning a new language are also interested in the culture of those countries where that language is spoken, not all of them are, so I wanted to keep this separate.
I have finally got the new site started and published four new posts already (I wanted to have some material ready for you all before I sent you there):
Cultural Observation: Observations about the cultures of various countries and peoples.
Please check it out and tell me what you think!
I’ve already written about:
- Initial Observations about the El Pilar Festival (Zaragoza, Spain)
- Are the Spanish Lazy? I didn’t think so until I came here…
- There Are No Bars, Restaurants, or Cafes in Spain (ok, a few restaurants)
- Coffee in Spain
And there’s lots more to come, I’m brimming with ideas and topics I want to write about. I really hope to be able to get some actual interviews on video for you with local Spaniards here in Zaragoza – what do you want me to ask them? What do you want to know about Spain, its culture, life here, Spaniards, perhaps Zaragoza in particular?
This blog won’t just be about Spain or Spanish-speaking peoples, it will be about the culture, habits, and interesting little idiosyncrasies of people and countries everywhere! For example, gun culture in the United States (I’m from Texas, I was raised shooting guns and hunting, I can comment on this extensively), pub culture in the U.K., salsa and latin dance in South America, the concept of losing face in Asian cultures, how it’s taboo in Japan to walk and eat at the same time (seriously, it is), etc. Stuff like that is what I have in mind.
If that interests you, please have a look at my blog, bookmark and share it, subscribe to the RSS feed (or just wait for me to email you about the newsletter I’m setting up for it, I know not too many people use RSS anymore), etc.
I really look forward to this little project, this is a subject that fascinates me.
Oh, and yes! I will be traveling to many other countries in the future (and writing about them, of course). Right now I have my sights set on Colombia and then Germany. Regrettably I’ve hardly done any German since I arrived here in Spain, I’ve just been too busy, but I loathe the thought of losing the progress I’ve made and plan to pick it back up as soon as I can.
Let me know what you think (oh, and yes, I know I’m terrible about responding to emails in a timely fashion right now, forgive me, I will get around to replying and do read all of them no matter what).
Cheers,
Andrew
