How Do You View Yourself as an American?

This week we were given an outline to write about American culture. This assigment I thought would take me 5 minutes actually took me longer because it was hard to see american culture from an ethnocentric point of view. This week we were also given a reading called Bemused in American, it was a German journalist writing in the Chicago Tribune about his impression of American culture. I was amazed at his fascination with supermarkets. I never realized how big Dominick's really is when he says, "a factory-sized building surrounded by a huge parking lot." The German journalist is used to small little shops to buy groceries instead of huge supermarkets. Also the journalist had a fascination with joggers. Just like the journalist I too don't understand the concept of jogging from point A to Point B then back to point A to start or even end a day. I understand it's good exercise but it makes no sense to me how running is fun, when all you are doing is going through the motions of left foot, then right foot, but don't forget to breathe every once in awhile. As Americans we never stop and take a look around at our culture and how exspansive and crazy it actually is.