Westlake, Texas: Day 2 & Cultural Differences

Next day, Tuesday, April 15th, Alberto and I woke up at 6:30 A.M. and immediately took a shower. After having breakfast, we went to school in Olivia's car with Taylor and her younger brother, listening to Olivia's cool music, and arrived just on time, at 8:00 A.M. At the beginning there was a meeting of the entire school and our ASB class. There was a short song played by a flute and sang by some elementary school students. The WLA were pledging their allegiance to the flags of Texas and USA. Then, the director introduced us to the school. When we entered the 10th grade classroom, we began doing cultural activities. For the first activity we divided ourselves in groups of five or more (students of ASB mixed with WLA students) , in order to ask each one of the group personal questions, such as favorite food, favorite song, favorite hobby, etc. Later there was a class competition to see which group remembered the most about the personal things from members of their goup. After that, the 10th grade students prepared a skit to show us the American clichés. Overall, they were quite interesting and funny. Later, we decided to do another activity: we divided ourselves into groups of five or more again. This time, we, the ASB students, had to inform the WLA students about the interesting places to visit and things to do in Bilbao, such as visiting the Guggenheim Museum, riding the tramway for a tour of the whole city, etc. Then, each group presented what the WLA students learned.

At 11:30 P.M. we had pizza in WLA, and left school at 12:30 P.M. Later, we were taken to a baseball game at the Texas Rangers Ballpark in Arlington to watch the local team, Texas Rangers, lose against LA Angels 7-4. It was quite entertaining, although a bit too long - it lasted about two hours and thrity minutes. Then Olivia took Alberto and me to her house with Taylor. We had fun playing ping-pong from 7:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. Later we went to Wendy's to pick our hamburgers and french fries. After we finished our dinner, Olivia, Taylor, Alberto and I went to take a bath in their neighbor's swimming pool. Then at 10:30 P.M. we went to sleep.




Here is what my teacher Jon Asensi assigned us to do during the night for homework:

AMERICAN CULTURE (in Texas) VS. SPANISH CULTURE (in Bilbao):

SIMILARITIES:

-Clothes - however, some WLA students said that generally we dress more formally
-Music -for instance, Taylor, Olivia and I have same taste for music, especially rock
-School subjects
-How the colleagues treat each other, laughing and joking
-Pastimes: sports, hanging out with friends, shopping, playing videogames, reading

DIFFERENCES:

-The American lifestyle is faster and more agitated, and most people seldom are not in a rush.
-The Spanish lifestyle is basically more calm.
-In the USA, cities are separated into different sections for living, shopping, visiting and working, so everyone must constantly use the car to drive from one place to another, even though newer cities are trying to mix everything together. As a result there are restaurants, pubs, banks, and drive-ins.
-In the USA, there is a curfew at 11:00 P.M. In other words, youngsters are not allowed to be outside their homes later than that time, whereas in Spain we tend to stay out until late in the night.

Social life:
-Americans are usually more dedicated to social and community activities.
-Americans are more open, naive and nicer, while people in the Basque Country, as well as Galicians, are more reserved, resentful and generally more hot-tempered.
- The drinking age in USA is 18 or 21, depending on the state you are living in, whereas here in Spain the drinking age is 18.
-The driving age in USA is 16, and in Spain, 18.
-Since prior to now there used to be a worrying number of accidents because of drunk teenagers who drove, the driving and drinking laws are more strictly applied in USA than in Spain, where most of us neglect them.

Food:
-In USA, people are very likely used to eat for a very short period of time, while we tend to take our time eating for a much longer time.
-American people use dressings, sauces, and spices for the food much more often than us.
-In general, Americans tend to enjoy fast-food meals (hamburgers, hot dogs, etc.) and junk food almost everyday, while we generally prefer to eat healthy food and other stuff, such as chick peas, lentles, beans, tortilla, paella, etc., and usually eat fast-food once every three or four weeks.

Timetables:
- In the USA most people wake up at around 6:00 A.M., have breakfast at 6:30 A.M., start school at 8:00 A.M., have a snack in the first break,have lunch at 1:00 P.M., and have dinner at around 5:30 P.M.-7:00 P.M. They then go to bed at 10:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M.

Housing:
-Most of us in Bilbao live in flats, and few live in mansions and luxurious apartments in exclusive places like La Galea and Neguri.
-Americans tend to live in all kind of houses in the suburbs; some WLA Texans lived in luxurious big houses, others in normal apartments, others in cottages, and others in ranch houses.

Sports:
- Americans prefer playing and watching American football, basketball, ice hockey, and baseball.
-Our traditional favorite sport in Spain is definitely and exclusively soccer.

Ethnicity:
- In USA (as we saw in Texas and in New York), there is a great blending of ethnic groups and people from other races and cultures, while in Spain there is much fewer mix of such people.

Family:
- In USA parents have greater control than their kids and are usually closer to their teenaged children than in Spain.
-The families are especially responsible for the wellbeing of their children.

School:
- School in the USA is more comfortable and welcoming, and it is very noticeable the sociable atmosphere that is maintained in Westlake Academy.
- School in the USA begins at 8:00 A.M. and finishes at 3:45 P.M., while our school starts at 9 A.M. and ends at 3:30 P.M.. However, the time of start and of finish varies in allschools throughout Spain. Students from WLA have one hour and fifteen minutes of school more than us, but tend to have less homework. Their recesses last as long as ours.
- WLA, even though it does not seem to be so, is a public school, unlike ours, the American School of Bilbao.
- WLA is small, similar to ours, and both have more or less the same number of pupils, around 300.
- In both WLA and the American School of Bilbao, students eat in the canteen.
-All students come to and leave WLA by car only, while we go either by bus, car, taxi or moto to our school.
- Every morning, the entire school community meets at 8:00 A.M. to swear their allegiance to the flag of USA and Texas.