(upbeat music) - Hola amigos, soy Courtney Cochran.

Feliz viernes.

Don't adjust your TV sets, I am speaking another language, I'm speaking Spanish because I love to learn new languages, and because it's fun Friday!

I also love to learn about new cultures.

You know, culture is a big idea, but to make it more simple, we can break it down into three categories: products - that's the things that a culture consumes, practices- the things that people in a culture do, and perspectives- the way that people within the culture see the world.

So today we are going to compare cultures.

This is a good way to learn about the world around us.

We're going to compare a picture of my family's Thanksgiving, which is always a big celebration and a picture of something called a Tamalada, which is popular in central America and Mexico.

It's a gathering of the family at Christmas time to make the tamales or what we sometimes call tamales.

They are meat or beans or cheese stuffed inside of a corn meal, and that's steamed in a corn husk or a cactus leaf, and they are delicious.

So let's take a look at these pictures.

What products, practices, and perspectives do you see in these pictures?

Well, I'll tell you what I see.

I see that in the picture of the Tamalada, the products that the family is consuming are tamales.

In the picture of my family, the products we're consuming are turkey, corn, and mashed potatoes.

And then in the picture of the Tamalada, the practice is that the family makes food together.

In the picture of my family, we bring food to the celebration and then we eat it.

And we share something in common here too.

When you look at both pictures, you can see that we all have the practice of sitting around the table together.

Now let's look at the perspectives in these two photos.

You can see that we actually have a lot in common here.

In both cultures, family is important and food brings us together.

Look at how much we learned about another culture just by comparing it with somebody else's, which was my culture.

You can do the same thing and learn so much the world around you.

And you can begin to see the world through other people's eyes.

We have so much in common and our differences are what makes us really special.

Have fun today, exploring the world around you.

(upbeat music)