Essay on culture

During my time so far at school, I have naturally met people from many different cultures. However, the melting pot of an international school does not allow most of us to live out our cultural habits very fully. Therefore I was glad to spend the fall holidays with my Dutch roommate at the home of her family in western Holland. Vacationing there I experienced more fully the Dutch culture.

The first thing I noticed is their way of greeting. Parents and children may kiss on the cheeks, but beside their greetings, there was very little physical contact. That certainly didn’t mean they weren’t friendly, though! I found very quickly that the four girls in my roommate’s family were as gregarious (and nearly as loud) as the four in mine!

Another very distinct tradition was regular greetings, Bible reading, and singing at the dinner table. “Eet smakelijk!” was a necessary introduction to all our meals—which consist, of course, of tremendous amounts of bread and sugar! I enjoyed very much the frequent breaks for coffee or tea. It was always exciting to hear, “Wat wil je drinken?” called up the stairs, because it meant a nice time was coming up for everyone relaxing together and chatting over our day with steaming cup of Something Sweet!

Of course, living there for a week I certainly picked up more of their language. What fun it was to sit at the table with a few objects and ask my hostess to please speak to me like a baby—just talk to me about these objects in simple sentences over and over, please! I could soon copy the common phrases that were repeated around the home, and I could understand even more in their conversation. "Pas op--ik kan wel Nederlands spreken!"

Going to church in the village was a very interesting (and somewhat sleepy, I must admit) experience. First, I had to wear a hat! Not that that was a problem; I was already used to dressing up—the Dutch dress very smartly almost all the time and I LOVE it. (I bought some nice boots during holidays because I knew I couldn’t survive a Dutch winter without them!) It was so unusual to me, but very nice, to see an entire village of people all walking to the same destination at the same time—there was only one church in town! Then we sat SO quietly while the service went on; the preacher’s voice seemed remote and far away, and the songs were all without meter—a strange phenomenon for me. And then we came back in the afternoon to do it all over again! 

Dutch culture has been very fun to experience! You can’t get free sauce in a restaurant and the sinks are so small you splash water everywhere if you’re not careful—but they make up for it with amazing flowers and by giving bikes the right of way. I think I like it.