How do greetings differ among cultures?
I talked to a man and he had gone to New Zealand, and he was in the airport, and he was so shocked because he saw a man waiting for a passenger to deplane. The passenger came out and he was all dressed in a suit, he was carrying a brief case. And yet when they greeted, they pressed their heads together and their noses together, and he did not know that that is the Mauri form of greeting. That is how they greet one another, but there is a deeper meaning. They are actually inhaling their essence. And it is very much related to what we used to call the Eskimo kiss. But they are really inhaling. In Hawaii, the word that we take as a negative called howly, meaning Americans, and it is kind of negative, but it really means not of the same breath. Because they used to greet that way too. They would inhale one another. I have had Filipino students say that they have gone to see their grandmother, or their grandmother for the first time, back in the Philippines. You know what she sniffed me. And it is the same thing. You learn a lot when you inhale the other person. You learn not so much about hygiene, you learn that too, you learn also about eating habits. Other places they bow. Especially Japanese. This weekend I was at the Japanese-American Museum and I ran into some friends, who actually are Korean. The parents of a friend. And when they saw me, they did the bowing. Other people kiss. Kiss on one cheek, kiss on two cheeks. Sometimes kiss on three cheeks. And you have to say, are they a two cheek or a three cheek person?
