Assignment 3- Richie Lane

I've traveled to most states on the east coast, but they aren't exactly culturally diverse. Sure, if you go down to Florida and accidentally bump into someone while walking down the street, you both jump to see who can say "sorry!" first, but if you go to New York and do the same thing, they rarely bother even turning back, but I'd hardly call that a cultural difference. On the other hand, over this past summer, I participated in the Sister Cities program, and visited Ireland. Just being there for 10 days, I noticed many cultural differences from the U.S. and Ireland. Besides driving on the other side of the road and basically every building being brick, I noticed that they don't take sports nearly as serious as we do. There's no tailgating, dressing out for games, and unless it's a major soccer game, it's not televised on anything besides ESPN. Their schooling is also very different. I had the people I met explain it to me about 100 times, and I still don't fully understand it. All I can tell you confidently is that they have some sort of point system, and the amount of points you get basically decides what college you go to and what you can pursue as a career. And instead of having semester grades and receiving grades based on homework, quizzes, tests, participation, etc., they earn their grade for that class by taking one test at the end of the year. College is also much less expensive. When I told them how much in state tuition for U.K. was, they busted out laughing. One year at U.K. would pay all 4 years for a university in Ireland. Overall, I'd say this experience gave me a greater understanding of how much the way we live in the U.S. differs from other countries.