One thing I'm finding hard to get used to here is the amount of litter on the streets. I've lived in places that had litter before, but nothing like this. People just throw their trash anywhere. A few weeks ago, in one of my classes, a student took his gum out of his mouth and threw it out of an open classroom window. Of course, I yelled at him, but he didn't seem phased. "At least I didn't put it under my desk" was his defense.
The other thing that bothers me is people spitting on the street. Sometimes I'll be walking and there will be an old man, or even a not so old man, and suddenly I'll hear the unmistakeable sound of someone coughing up phlegm from the back of their throat, after which it is deposited on the sidewalk. It never fails to gross me out.
But then, sometimes I think, who am I to judge? I shouldn't come here and impose my conceptions of what is and isn't polite behavior on a culture that isn't mine and that I don't have enough experience with to fully understand.
I found this article addressing the same topic:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=42670
What do you think? Am I being a cultural imperialist?
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1 comment:
this article contained the following words that i do not know: contumacious, conurbation, opsimaths.
maybe you can go to that viennese ball the austrian embassy holds! that would be pretty cool! i'll bet it's easy to get involved in embassy functions in a place as small as Skopje.
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