When you go to America, you're going to experience cultural differences. But what is culture? We're going to give you an opportunity to answer that question in just a few minutes. But before we do that, let me ask you another question. How did you learn to play cricket? Did you Google it?
Did you learn it in a class in school? Did you go to a local bookstore and pick up a book about cricket? No, I don't think you did. You learn to play cricket the way I learned to play baseball and went out in the backyard with my brother. I learned to bat he corrected me as others would. And eventually I got the rules down and I learned what baseball was all about.
Another question for you. Are cricket in baseball the same game? You say no. But there is a bat and a ball there innings that runs at a lot of things look alike. My son's played baseball in Delhi at the American Embassy Club. And I remember when some of the Indian kids came to play with them, they begin to bat with their bat towards the ground.
And when they hit the ball, they would carry their bat with them the first base, everyone would yell, no, no, no, you can't do it that way. When we play cricket in the park with our neighbors, what did we do? We held our bat up like this. And whenever we hit the ball, we threw the bat on the ground. So what happens if you play baseball or cricket using the rules of the other? culture is like a game.
And when you go to the US, you'll need to learn the new rules of the game. You can't do America by Indian rules. And a great friend. I'll be nice Gandhi and I'll be nice. lived in Long Island, I'll be nice what he would invite us to our house, he would come and say, Hey, come and spend the day. Now many of my American friends, they would say, come for dinner at six, and we would eat around 630.
And a few hours later we would be we'd be done we'd be going home. But without the national would go to his house. And Barfi would cook us a great meal, some good Gujarati food, or perhaps whatever, especially almost Mexican Indian American pizzas. And we had a wonderful time. We'd watch an American football game on these favorite team was the Dallas Cowboys. And so arrived at two in the afternoon 10 at night we're leaving and I say to Avinash obby.
Thank you. We've had a wonderful time. And what did Avinash say? amin I said, Well, I don't say thank you. Why did he not say don't say thank you. You know, don't you?
Because on the national is saying thank you is too formal for the relationship we have. We're too close of friends to say thank you. Now, in my own American culture, if my mother would bring me a glass of water, I might say thank you. And so it isn't considered formal in the same way. But it's simply a pattern of the way we do things. Culture is a dance.
Now some of you are saying, well, in India, we do say thank you. And I definitely agree with that as well. In certain situations, thank you is a very normal thing for you to say and to do. In that way, cultures of dance, you have to feel like we're going to give you a significant amount of information. We're going to give you tools to learn American culture better. But this course will be more than a list of do's and don'ts.
We want to build your cultural awareness So you'll be able to keep learning with confidence when you arrive in the US. I want you to take a few minutes now and write down your own definition of culture or a metaphor that comes into your mind when you think of culture.