My first day playing soccer.

As a new player I come in on one Sunday night, I introduce myself to the group and everyone introduces themselves and welcomes me to the team. I started my conversation with few people before the game but my topic is anything but soccer. Why I do that, because I don’t know much about soccer. My conversation becomes shorter and shorter as I know people better and also because they the team and I have different interest on topic for the conversation. Between members of the team they talk about soccer all the time, how to pass the ball, how the score and so on. The topic is part of cultural barrier that stop me from carrying on the conversation and I feel lonely among the crowd. In MontanaTech culture, to the team I am not a member of the culture; however, in Soccer culture on Sunday night, I am a stranger.

Confused with "Rituals"

Chad,

I have a hard time to locate rituals or soccer culture, can you give me some hints

thanks,

Comment about the “World Party”

The World Party was a great success for us, Intercultural class, at Montana Tech. Students from different countries have opportunities to celebrate and introduce their culture to other cultures and more importantly they create a bridge between cultures. However, There is something I want to comment about the party. Lots of time I find people tend to stay within their group, for example Indian student talks with Indian student and Saudi student talk with their friend from the same country. This is understandable because between people of the same culture, they are homophilous, the conversation can be initiated easily without doubt. However, starting a conversation with people who speaks different language and have different religion is a lot more difficult. In order to help them overcome culture barriers, we can find some topic that they can share based on their knowledge, based on their past experience so that they can talk with each other easier. Individual performance was great but we should also have group performance because that way each culture can be introduced little bit better. As far as the party goes, I found four traditional costumes at the World Party and we need more of that. We can organize the party like a Halloween party with traditional costume of different culture.

Writting final project

For my final project I decided to immerse myself in soccer culture at Montana Tech. The team gathers to play every Sunday night. This culture is a combination of number of different cultures from all over the world, where people speak different languages, have different belief and religion, but on the soccer field that speak only one language, soccer. There are a lot of good player in the team, however I’m not good at playing soccer but I want to join the team to learn how to play soccer and also learn and adapt in such a unique culture.
I’m trying to follow the guideline from instructor along with knowledge that I learn from Intercultural Communication class to explore this co-culture of Montana Tech culture.
Cultural characteristic:
1. Language: surprisingly language in soccer culture is a nonverbal language not a verbal language. That explain how player around the world can be transferred to a new team, new place where he cannot communication using his language but he can play along quite well. The language using here in form of leg movement, and sometime eyes contact. This language sometimes can be a cultural marker for team member to distinguish between member within a group or outside the group depends on how well the player communicates with the others.
2. Values: in soccer, players value honesty, fairplay, and sportsmanship. On the field, if somebody gets hurt, they will stop the ball and not resume the game until they ensure the play has been taken care of. Within a team, when on individual has a score and he has a second chance but his partner doesn’t he will try to give the ball his partner more and hopefully he also has a goal.
3. Interest: the team gets together on the weekend to see friends, having a good time, exercising and trying to be healthy.

Update

Still working on the project, haven't done much of the writting and spending time with the soccer team. Just got back from Portland, so tired a lot of driving. I'll try to get few paragraphs this week and refine them next week.

Final project introduction and progress

Outline for final project

· What is the topic for final project

Immerse myself into a culture where I considered a stranger

· Subculture I will be researching on

Research on soccer culture

· How do you find this topic is relevant for the final project

Most of the players are students from Montana Tech and others are living in Butte. This is a fantastic experience because the soccer players come from number of different countries and speak different languages. The most interesting fact is they all speak english fluently but there is another language they use to communicate more frequently during the game. It is soccer language, one type of nonverbal language. This language involves eye contacts, body gestures and all this form while team members practice many time. I am new to this culture and not quite understand the culture and it cause misinterpretation the codes; therefore, I would consider myself as a stranger in this particular culture.

· Is the project in progress or not, if it is how far have you gone

My project is in first phase of the progress, where I started to gather my ideas and pick a topic for the project. I started to participate every soccer game on Sunday evening at montana tech.

· What I’ll be looking for from this group

How did they welcome me, as a new member of the team. This is an example of how they react to a stranger. How members in the culture, members of the team,communicate during the game. Find some example of signs and symbols and what it stands for. Is the language developed to a certain point, or it will be developing as members exchange the language. How did I adapt in a new environment at first and how did I communicate as as stranger. What have I learned as I expose to this culture. Come up with a comparison of the way I think about interculture before I did this project and after.

· What is a target date to finalize the project

I try to final lize this project before the 24^th of November