Oops... Shouldn't have done that.

One of the most compelling facts I've learned so far is that most other countries/people think that there are only 5 continents instead of 7. That's why there are only 5 rings on the Olympic flag. When we discussed this in class, I was really intrigued. The US is really different from all the other countries in the world. It uses the standard measuring system whereas the majority of other countries use the metric system. Also I think it's weird that people in the US use football to describe a sport in which the ball hardly ever touches the foot. These differences in supposedly common cultural knowledge in the US varies extremely when you go from place to place.
On the same lines hand gestures mean really different things in different cultures. In the Hmong culture, there's a hand gesture where you tell someone "shame, shame, shame" for doing something they shouldn't have. It's typically used for children when they do something bad. Without thinking about it, I did this hand gesture to my Mexican friend when she did something "bad," and she was in total shock. She was speechless and confused for a moment. After I told her what it meant, she started laughing and told me never to do that hand gesture to a Mexican because it has a totally different meaning. She didn't tell me the meaning though because it was that horrible. Apparently it had some sort of sexual innuendo that I wasn't aware of. I learned my lesson, and I won't do that hand gesture in the presence of Mexicans again. It may cause me more trouble that I want and need.