Kelsey Fuehrer- Friendships

Friendship is a very important relationship for many people. While some have lots of friends, others, like me, are okay with just having one or two close friends. Martin and Nakayama state that intercultural relationships can be both personal and contextual there are some things that are personal and stay the same in every situation, and some things depend on context. I grew up with many friends who were different than I. Most of my friends have been of different races or cultural backgrounds. One of these was very different than I in every aspect. We are of different races, religious backgrounds, morals and values, and different cultures, yet we seemed to get along just fine. How we interacted really did depend on the situation. Some things were always the same between us, for example we used to always crack jokes about how different we were, other of our interactions depended on the context of the situation. There were several times when we would be around each others families and we would both make an effort to respect and follow some of their family and cultural norms. She is from a family and a background where they believe that the women should do the work and the men should be served, it was sometimes hard for me to not speak up about this but I would always respect their way of life. And after we would go through these times where we might have felt uncomfortable we would talk about it and talk about how we are different, and yes we would usually end up cracking some joke about the awkward difference. It seems weird to look back at our friendship now, because I'm sure that people would look at us and think how can they possibly be friends when they are just so different. Somehow though we seemed to make it work and always had fun with each other. Over time it got less uncomfortable and awkward when we were around each others families but it never totally went away.

Reference:
Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2012). Intercultural Communication in Contexts.Chicago: McGraw Hill.