96 posts tagged “culture”
- Its portrayal of the immigrant integration challenge: the mother, a low-skilled Finnish immigrant to Gothenburg in Sweden in the 1980's, doesn't speak any Swedish and cannot understand her surroundings, and
- The tackling of the situations a kid growing with two languages and cultures can face: supporting her parents in the local community and being harassed for her background.
I read this book a few months ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. The video explains it quite nicely, doesn't it?
A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to visit Stockholm, to finally see Nortec Collective live. Nedless to say, we jumped around like crazy and enjoyed the gig immensely, especially since instead of Banda samples they actually had live musicians backing them up (who played an encore of their own). We even ended up backstage with them after the gig, and naturally welcomed them to come to the Helsinki Festival whenever they could.
It was a very welcome pause, and it was nice to see that Stockholm still looks the same. An interesting note was that everybody spoke to me in Swedish (even though I had a tejana on most of the time), while that seldom happens in Finland with or without funny hats.
May I have some culture with my commute, please.
Seen in a recent trip to London.
Finally the Mexican Embassy here truly put a programme together for Independence Day, and there was a whole week of activities last week related to Mexico and Mexican culture. They did have the traditional reception for the Mexican community here, but there was also a piano concert, exhibitions of folk dress and art, workshops on Mexican dance, architecture and the experience of Mexicans in Finland, and they even brought a famous Mexican chef here!
There was some interesting cultural exchanges during the period, as the video below of local student choir Ylioppilaslaulajat shows:
I even ended up singing at some point, LOL... ;-) Kudos to the Mexican Embassy, and I hope they organise these kind of events again.
Yes, of course it did. The structure of the city is typically American, built around the car, and of course the American and Texan flags fly everywhere you look. Furthermore, you will find that Texans are very, very proud of their heritage and to be respected, of course.
However, in a recent visit to San Antonio I was surprised by the huge Mexican influence in the place, as can be seen in the photo to the right and in these other two. I was also rather impressed by the Spanish-language proficency of people not of Hispanic descent, and the amount of Hispanics in the city was quite large. I was wondering if it was always like this given its geographic location or if this is a recent change.
One of those things that I was not used to anymore was how Mexican wedding receptions are organised. The wedding ceremony itself can be religious or not (usually you have both, as there is complete separation of Church and State in the country) but as almost everywhere else you have the reception.
In Finland, the reception is a very orderly affair, with a programme that will include the toast and the banquet, performances by a band and maybe even the guests, speeches and finally some dancing. In Mexico, it is quite orderly as well, but you don't notice it so much. You will first have the toast and the banquet, then the first waltz and finally a lot of dancing (6 hours of it).
To keep the audience entertained, depending on the music being played the band will use props that will also be distributed to the audience, so for example they'll have balloons when having samba, cowboy hats for music from northern Mexico, hats, shirts, etc. Furthermore, they'll bring in certain members of the audience to dance on the stage with their respective attire, which becomes very funny with songs like YMCA.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, they're just different.
I have been to different sporting events, but lucha libre in Mexico City is more than that. The masks, the chanting and the elaborate tricks show a lot about Mexican culture, if you care to dig a little.
It also helps that it's a lot of fun to watch live: not only for the performers, but especially for the audience.
Update: I followed my own advice and dug a little about the cultural impact of lucha libre. I found this video (unfortunately only in Spanish) of a documentary on lucha libre. I bumped into another interesting clip explaining lucha libre in an article reviewing a recent performance in London. However, you might get an idea by watching this very amusing music video:
Especially for people not used to it, the Finnish holiday season is quite an experience, if for nothing else, for its length.
Here in Finland, people take 4 weeks during July, which means that during this month the whole country is basicaly closed for business. This is the time when summer trainees and skeleton crews are responsible for the continued functioning of the nation while the majority spend their weeks in a summer cabin in the middle of the forest, preferrably next to a lake, but maybe without running water or electricity.
Only peace and quiet.
The BBC has a hilarious list of office jargon used at workplaces around the world. Any of the regular readers of now-jailed Martin Lukes will definitely appreciate it.
