In our second meeting with Professor Saba, Ibby and I had a barbecue picnic with his family. We met his wife and one year old son. In this meeting, we discussed what the term “culture” meant to each of us. The term culture to me (and to Professor Saba) can be summed up in two words: family and food. He grilled marinated chicken and steaks, and we had corn and a tomato, onion, and vinaigrette salad on the side with some bread. This is a very common Brazilian meal and tradition. Professor Saba mentioned that at all family gatherings there are always meats being grilled.
One thing we discussed that made me see a new perspective is the relationship between Professor Saba’s wife and living in Brazil. I asked her why she wouldn’t move back to Sao Paulo, and she said that it had to do with a changing lifestyle and mentality that her family and friends (in short, their class) have now. We then started talking more about this, and it turns out that because of being part of the “white middle class” in Brazil, their values and priorities now do not align with things that the Saba’s are in agreement with. For example, as the years have gone by, they have now shifted their focus on denigrating lower classes and being much more materialistic. Thus, they do not want to move back or even go back to visit because “they don’t have anything to talk about”. This conversation made me see a few different things from a new perspective. For example, I never would have thought that values and priorities can shift within a whole “class” in such a short period, and how moving to a new country and understanding new cultures can change your views on things that you might have once thought were normal. I had an understanding of how learning about new cultures can open your mind about new cultures (and values and customs etc), but not that it might change previous “norms”.
