Culture of...

As I sit here experiencing the strongest I miss Africa moment I have since coming back, I can't help thinking about the culture of America. I've been to many places where the locals will tell me that my home country doesn't have any culture.

According to the ever entertaining Wikipedia, culture as it is popularly understood is broken into three phases.

• excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities
• an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

I tended to agree with my friends. I mean where do wonderfully majestic buildings exist in America? No place kind of like London. Where are there wonderfully small roads with a surprise around every corner in the form of little shops or restaurants? Melbourne and the bar quarters of most European cities have this. Yet, moving back to America I just have to disagree now. (Sorry L!) The answer to the first question is most definitely Washington DC. Not allowing any other building to be bigger than the US Capitol Building has lead to a sense of majesty that I have to say is unique to DC. Philadelphia has to be the most European of American cities I've ever been to. I just hope the Italians of South Philly don't read this! There is a whole neighborhood called Society Hill here that looks like it was transplanted straight from England. I'm also extremely impressed by this city because it is the smallest big city that I've seen. It has a million and a half people yet seems so much better.

The funniest thing for me is "relearning" America. The dialects and sayings are so funny and vast. The newest one I'm trying to decipher is as follows.

I say "How are you?" to someone.
He or She responds "Sucker free or trying to stay sucker free."

Anyone have any idea what that means?