I'm feeling the need to reclaim a German ritual that I abandoned sometime in the last year and a half. It's the ritual of greeting and leaving. In Germany you greet someone with words and a hand-shake. And you end the conversation basically the same way. Here in the U.S. I was culture-shocked at the beginning when people would come up, state their business then turn around and walk away as soon as they said their thing or got their answer. I felt like conversations ended so abruptly and was somewhat offended by that. Over the past months, I've gotten used to it and tend to do it myself. But now recently I'm returning to the idea of showing courtesy in conversing and want to come to a happy medium between the more formal Germany way and the abrupt/rude American way. So I won't do the hand-shake because I know I would get weird looks and confusion, but I want to at least verbally acknowledge the beginning and ending of conversations, and also emails.
It may seem less efficient to do this, but I think the underlying value here is that I want to show I recognize the person and am interested in the person instead of just communicating that I want an answer or want to tell someone something and then taking off. We'll see how it goes and if anyone even notices. But I'll know!