Cultures always fascinate me. How do they develop? How do they change? How the meaning of an action is different in different cultures? Why people are not very good at seeing things from another perspective (influenced by another culture)? To continue learning about cultures, I just finished reading a book - Figuring Foreigners Out -which gives very pragmatic advice on understanding and adapting to new cultures. Thanks to my teacher, Donna Stringer , for recommending the book. Following are some edited excepts that explain fundamentals of culture: 1. Culture is the shared assumptions, values, and beliefs of a group of people which result in characteristic behaviors. And, cultural generalizations are necessarily statements of likelihood and potential, not of certainty. 2. An instance of behavior has no particular meaning other than what the people who witness that behavior assign to it. Behavior means what we decide ...