Elisabetta Piacente
COM 225
Since I am an international exchange student coming from Italy, everyday I have the opportunity to
talk to people of different cultures than mine.
Today at lunchtime I was talking to a friend who is a native of Korea, but has been living in
Australia since he was just a kid. As we were discussing about food and the different culinary
traditions in our countries, I stated that American food is pretty different from Italian one and I
admitted that I sometimes miss Italian cooking. By talking to him, I noticed how food culture is
salient in Italy, while my friend told me that they don’t have a really typical dish in Australia and
sometimes their cuisine is similar to that of the United States. On the contrary, in Korea products
and meals are particular and quite exclusive, which means that Korean cuisine has well-
recognisable distinctive features. It was very interesting to notice how different countries are: while
for us Italians food is a fundamental cultural value, other countries may have different ways of
expressing their cultural identity.
Talking to each other, we noticed another really interesting difference between us, which is the way
we talk. I noticed that Southern Europeans gesticulate while talking, as I did; we move our hands a
lot and we use plenty of facial expressions to express our feelings and our ideas. What’s more, we
also tend to speak loudly and very quickly. On the contrary, my Korean friend was really quiet
during the conversation; he didn’t gesticulate at all because he is not used to do it, he didn’t use
many facial expressions and his voice tone was lower than mine. These are for sure just a few of the
many differences we could notice between my culture and the Korean one.
However, it has been really interesting not only to listen to him, but also to observe the different
ways of expressing ourselves, and I have realized that intercultural communication is a very good
way not just to learn more about the rest of the world, but also to enrich ourselves and discover
something about us that we had never noticed before.
