Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hi guys, I'm Shelby Steers and I'm a senior in high school at a
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chessman.
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And today I have the opportunity to
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talk to you guys about intercultural differences.
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And this is something that I feel like people mainly don't know what that means.
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And honestly, I didn't either,
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but this basically means that you're kind of having a understanding and
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there's obviously differences in culture and you kind of come to an understanding
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of what those differences are.
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And it's very important because our world is becoming increasingly globalized.
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And
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I feel like this is something that is going to be coming up more and more and more
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as we have more cultures moving in and we are meeting more people as we grow older.
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And as a senior in high school,
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I have learned how really important it
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is to embrace other people's understandings cultures,
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values, customs, all of it together.
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Because
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if not, it is very hard to make friends, it is very hard to
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just honestly grow up if you don't
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um have any understanding of other people's cultures
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and it is very effective when you're communicating because you
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don't want to upset someone because you don't know,
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kind of what their take on life is or their religion.
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That's a really big one.
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and the changing
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of everyone around you as you grow older.
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And
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it's, like I said, as a high school student,
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I've made many friendships with people that are different than me.
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That's kind of just the way the world works.
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And, um,
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it is hard because if someone has a different religion than you and it's kind of
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hard if they say something that kind of
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upsets your feel upsets you hurt your feelings
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and
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you have to understand that having friends with different backgrounds
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is going to be a little bit more difficult.
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And if maybe you need to just talk about it to kind of make an understanding.
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And I realized the importance of having this
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mutual understanding of not necessarily being like,
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yes, I agree with you.
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You're right, but just understanding and they're not, there's not a right,
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there's not a wrong.
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Um
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And culture also has different opinions and values, meaning
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you might say something and your friend has a completely different opinion on it.
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And that's ok.
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And
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intercultural differences can be a variety of different factors.
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This can be language, this can be customs, values, traditions,
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customs, all of it as a whole. Someone might not support um a
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holiday that you support,
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someone might be bilingual, might speak very little English. But that's amazing.
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That's so cool that people can speak different languages
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and
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that's just part of it.
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Um,
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and someone might have a different value because
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of their family and that's super important.
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And I do live in Nicholasville. That is a small town for most people.
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And it's crazy to me looking around, you're like, oh, intercultural differences.
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I probably will have to deal with that in like New York or big cities
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when really
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even living in a small town, there are so many different people.
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Um We have lots of different religions and that's so crazy
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that I can say that living in this town that I do
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um
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and talking to people in different cultures and you can just see the
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similarities that we have even though we're so different at the same time
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and it just creates a lot of respect in the world today,
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respecting someone else's culture means that your
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culture is respected right behind you.
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And that's so amazing and it just makes creativity because honestly,
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America would not be the way it is without different people in different cultures.
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We would not have some of the foods, we have the jobs we have
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the people that we have. That's so crazy to think about, but it's so extremely true
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that we would not have the people that we have today.
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We would not have the jobs, we would not have
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people to do certain things.
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If we didn't have that type of culture that knew how to do those type of things.
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And like I said, in the beginning of my speech,
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I made many friendships off of being friends with people from different cultures.
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And one of my best friends is a different culture than me. And I absolutely love her.
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Her name is Victoria and she is Ukrainian while I am Christian.
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So we do have a big dynamic um
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difference where we do have different religions that where we are
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supporting, but
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we also believe in the same thing.
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Um Just,
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it's different and it's crazy to see we believe in
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the same thing but how different we are on scales.
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Um And exactly how we um show that we support that person.
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And um that's why I decided to interview her.
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And
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um as a Christian myself,
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I just kind of went off of questions about religion to start off.
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And I first asked her about her religion, which I already knew she was
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Ukrainian.
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And then I also started talking to her about
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what her favorite thing is in her religion.
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And she went off to say that her favorite
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thing in her religion is the community around her,
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which I feel like is so amazing saying that because I feel like honestly many people
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um don't really talk about the community around
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them and I feel like that's super important.
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I thought that was super cool that she stated that.
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And I also asked her um about family traditions
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and she started talking about how her,
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one of her favorite family traditions is Easter,
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which I think is so cool because I also celebrate Easter.
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And
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I mean, that's something that's really important is that's kind of the staple.
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Most people celebrate Easter.
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Um And she talked about how her family celebrates by making a certain bread,
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which I've never heard of.
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And we don't do that in my culture. And I didn't honestly think
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that that would be something that was so important to a different culture.
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And I love that it is.
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And um she kind of got to
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learn how to make it.
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And as an adult, every single Easter morning, they wake up super,
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super early and make a bread and the younger daughters get to learn how to make that.
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So when they have a family, they get to make that, which I thought was so cool because
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as someone that is Christian, we don't really do that.
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It's just kind of the parents cook, they cook whatever they kind of want to.
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And that's so cool that,
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that's that one food that they learn to make every single year for that um holiday.
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And
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I also asked her something about um
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holidays and traditions um about,
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are there any American holidays that you do not celebrate?
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Which is Halloween?
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And um she said that they do not celebrate Halloween because of
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what it is behind it and kind of what it is for.
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And I actually as a Christian I do agree with that statement and I do think that
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it should kind of be looked at a little bit differently.
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Um,
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and she said they do not celebrate it because
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it has a deeper meaning than just kids running around
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and,
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um, grabbing candy from doorsteps.
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And I do agree, I could see where she's saying that as well. And I think that's
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amazing that
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that's so,
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um, talked about in her religion
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And we also talked about, um,
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we also talked about
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um what life experience has shaped you into, um,
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the person you are today because life experience is such a big
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part of who makes you you and what makes you different.
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And she talked about how church has really pushed her,
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um, in the direction to be who she is today, which I totally, I think is amazing.
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And she said that it's not just a religion to her. It is so much bigger than that.
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And there's so much else that goes behind it than just religion.
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And
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it really just showed me how she has not just made
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um herself Ukrainian and just calls herself Ukrainian.
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She really does just love being
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a Ukrainian and loves God and puts all that before anything else in her life.
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And it's not selfish when it comes to that.
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And I think that is just an amazing thing and I think
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that it kind of did shock me,
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um how much they really do put their all into their religion.
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But I think that's again part of different cultures and
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it's so cool to learn about how people are celebrating
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and,
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um everything.
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And I also asked her,
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what are times and events today that she could not imagine life without.
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And she said that would be
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when they would, um, go prayers that we would,
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he were held in houses together from the young for the church.
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So she's very big
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and to, um,
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the young in her church and the youth group and
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they would wake up and make Ukrainian pancakes. And,
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um, that's one of her other favorite things and being known as a bilingual girl. Um,
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and that's just things that have really shaped her and her
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culture and her religion has shaped her as a person.