today for the first time i got told off for opening an email to a professor with "Hey,"
A foreigner staying in the city would notice almost immediately that the way people carried themselves was very alien, subtly but strongly different from what they would expect. It would take several days or weeks at least, however, to actually uncover enough of the specifics to fully understand the dynamics of this society. The townsfolk had only been playing host to Kevin for two days thus far, and it was today that he recorded the first item in a list he expected to fill his journal entirely.
"In the homeland, we are encouraged to treat our elders with reverence, in respect of the many more years they've spent alive than ourselves. Here, the opposite is convention: parents and grandparents seem to have a sort of awe and wonder when looking at children. The elders seem to view the sort of enthusiasm and playfulness that most people lose after "growing up" as extremely important - playing ball or make-believe, for example, seems to be a ritual, while I'm inclined to think of it as idle entertainment. Of course kids are commonly called by name, but when chatting amongst themselves, and sometimes when dealing with a large group of kids, parents use a word that, as best as I can tell, translates to 'our future'.
A novice to this society, knowing this, might expect that children are haughty and disrespectful, which is why it's so surprising to understand this dynamic after spending some time already around them... the kids seem to always convey gratitude along with pride. It is almost a master-servant relationship, but kids also seem to realize that older people tend to know better by experience, so there's a... what seems to be a delicate balance between treating younger people as the more important members of society and letting the older ones make any actually guiding decisions."
i notice that coming up with names is pretty difficult. sometimes a name for a character or place or thing comes to me on the spot, but more often it's a battle to get anything that would actually fit well.
"In the homeland, we are encouraged to treat our elders with reverence, in respect of the many more years they've spent alive than ourselves. Here, the opposite is convention: parents and grandparents seem to have a sort of awe and wonder when looking at children. The elders seem to view the sort of enthusiasm and playfulness that most people lose after "growing up" as extremely important - playing ball or make-believe, for example, seems to be a ritual, while I'm inclined to think of it as idle entertainment. Of course kids are commonly called by name, but when chatting amongst themselves, and sometimes when dealing with a large group of kids, parents use a word that, as best as I can tell, translates to 'our future'.
A novice to this society, knowing this, might expect that children are haughty and disrespectful, which is why it's so surprising to understand this dynamic after spending some time already around them... the kids seem to always convey gratitude along with pride. It is almost a master-servant relationship, but kids also seem to realize that older people tend to know better by experience, so there's a... what seems to be a delicate balance between treating younger people as the more important members of society and letting the older ones make any actually guiding decisions."
i notice that coming up with names is pretty difficult. sometimes a name for a character or place or thing comes to me on the spot, but more often it's a battle to get anything that would actually fit well.