Are we the product of our culture or vise versa?

While in CZ I tried to soak up as much of their culture as I could, just to get the full experience, be accepted, and try to see things from their perspective. Along the way, I became accustomed to their way of eating, drinking, walking, and talking. I decided that logically I would like to choose to keep some of their habits while living in the US. So (you know me) before I left I made a list of all of the habits that I wanted to keep. I wanted to keep my largest meal at the noon time and only eat a light meal in the morning and in the evening, with snacks in between. I wanted to limit how many sodas I would drink and find some way to walk or exercise when I could. Finally I wanted to make an effort at recycling and encourage my family to do so.

Well, I’ve just been in Oklahoma for two weeks, and I think I’ve gained at least 5lbs if not 10 and completely failed at trying to sustain the healthy habits that I kept in CZ. People would ask me for dinner and either fix a large meal for me or expect me to order a large meal at a restaurant. When I would eat with other people for lunch, they would eat a light sandwich or something, and I felt kind of like a pig with my large meal. Breakfast was almost a complete failure, because I was eating the preservative filled bread topped with (delicious) cheddar cheese. Even though I realized how unhealthy the cheddar cheese was, I’ve just missed it so much and I can’t get enough of it. I think eating a grilled cheese sandwich is definitely worth the walk required to burn it back off.

As far as recycling is concerned, I’m daily shocked at how much waste we create in airports, fast food, and just around the house. In Ponca City we don’t have a recycling center, and I was making a bag to take to Stillwater, but we didn’t make it there before I left and I’m a little afraid the bag of cans and bottles won’t be there when I get back in another two weeks. In the fast food restaurants like Mc Donalds and KFC in Europe, they take your trash from the trays and recycle the parts that they can. They offer fewer napkins, too. How many napkins do we truly need? How much paper do we waste in unused napkins? And don’t get me started on airlines and airports. To be respectful I don’t know for sure that they don’t separate out all of those plastic cups, and some airports do have places where you can recycle your newspapers. But, it sure seems like there are several thousand small plastic cups thrown in the garbage each day along with all of the waste from the fast food places in the airports. So, what’s a girl to do, when the world around her is just saying, “We don’t really care how much trash we make. And even when we do feel regret, there’s nowhere to recycle our waste,” and they aren’t making it up for the most part.

I think I could keep going on about the obstacles I’ve met when trying to drink fewer sodas and yet fulfill my cravings for Cherry Vanilla DP or the difficulty I had finding a way to exercise in Ponca when the pool is closed and the pavement is so smooth and flat and my dog is getting to old to walk very far, but I think you see where I’m going with this. How much of our culture just encourages us to keep doing the unhealthy things that fill our day? Eating in restaurants and getting calorie loaded coffee serve as important parts of our social habits. Sure you can ask a friend to Dinner and just order soup or a small salad, but it’s strange. You can park at one store and then walk to the next one, even when it’s a good 5, 10, or 15 min walk away, but you get strange looks and someone might try to tell you it’s not safe or it’s so much faster to just drive. Some states really crack down on recycling, but when will we recognize the problems we face as a nation. How did we end up here?