Global Identities: Assignment 2

Assignment #2

Answer the following questions through a photo or song:  Using the cultural adjustment readings describe the following: Are you viewing your experience through your own cultural lens?  How does this differ from the host-culture perspective? What holds importance for you? How can you portray this experience to others? Discuss some of the differences you are encountering. (At least 600 words)

1)  A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Send us a postcard!!!  Not literally of course, but send us a digital picture that best describes your experience.  Send along text to describe/narrate why you chose the picture and how you feel it depicts your answer to the questions above.

            This photo was taken the morning after I arrived in Toledo, Spain. In the moment, I was frustrated because I could not fall back asleep due to my jetlag, but as time proceeded I became more content. As I struggled to go back to sleep, I noticed a light peaking through my window. It was six in the morning and I felt more awake than ever. Initially, I wanted to be asleep, but suddenly I became captivated by the sunrise. It almost served as a metaphor for my study abroad journey. I knew that there were going to be challenges while being abroad, but once I arrived in Toledo they became so much more real.

            Within my first few days in Spain I gradually began to lose hope. This “hope” mostly revolved around my academics in Spain, specifically with the language adjustment. I knew a good amount of Spanish, but I was nowhere near being fluent. At my new school, Fundacion Jose Ortega, the teachers will NEVER speak to you in English, and that was somewhat of a cultural shock to me. It made me scared to even converse in a casual setting, because I didn’t want to say something wrong or not speak fast enough. I consider myself a perfectionist, and being abroad has made it even more difficult to accept my mistakes…but through time and perseverance, I am learning to adjust to my surroundings and tell myself that failure isn’t always a bad thing.

In “Culture shock and the cross-cultural learning experience,” Adler writes about the initial frustrations that can occur during one’s stay abroad. After reading his section “The First View: Culture Shock as the Prelude to Adjustment,” I began to finally understand why I was feeling the way I did. Adler describes individuals going through culture shock as “sad, angry, frustrated, estranged,” and so much more (Adler, p.1, 1972). I realized that I was, in fact, going through these feelings. I felt deep sadness and estrangement when seeing photos of my friends online back home, and when I couldn’t talk to my boyfriend, due to the seven-hour time difference. In addition, I began to experience severe self-pity when thinking about my academics being in a whole different language from what I am used to. I wanted to stay positive, but something was just telling me I wasn’t able to accomplish anything.

After reading Paige’s “Strategies for Developing Intercultural Competence,” I could simply define these feelings of frustration and denial as “ethnocentrism”. In other words, ethnocentrism means: “believing your own culture is superior to others and having the tendency to view other cultures in terms of one’s own” (Paige, p. 108, 2006). Ethnocentrism can also be more damaging, making one view their “own culture as the central or mainstream culture against which others should be compared and judged” (Paige, p. 108, 2006). After reading this article, I can unfortunately admit that I was initially a little ethnocentric and only viewed my experiences through my cultural lens. Once the difference in language became a reality, and my professors would not speak to me in my native language—nor let me speak in my native language—I began to show ethnocentrism and didn’t understand why they wouldn’t just adjust to my native language instead. As time proceeds I hope that I lose my ethnocentric attitudes and become more ethnorelative instead. That being said, I will become more “accepting, adaptive, and integrative” of the differences that surround me while being in a new culture (Paige, p. 107, 2006).

            The sunrise over Toledo provided hope for me. There is so much beauty in Spain. There is so much to learn and so much to see. After about two weeks of a great deal of discouragement, I had finally discovered my hope. Looking around my school, I noticed that almost every student was in my shoes. We all had to take our time fabricating sentences and comprehending phrases in Spanish. It was at that moment that I became content. I realized that it is okay that I am nowhere near being fluent, because every day I will become more comprehensive in Spanish than I was the day before. This is just the beginning, and I am very excited to see where this journey takes me.

Work Cited

•    Adler, P. S. (1972). Culture shock and the cross-cultural learning experience. In D. S. Hoopes (Ed.), Readings in intercultural communication (Vol. II). Pittsburgh, PA: Regional Council for International Education.

•    Paige, R. M., Cohen, A. D., Kappler, B., Chi, J. C., & Lassegard, J. P. (2006). Strategies for developing intercultural competence. In Maximizing study abroad: A students’ guide to strategies for language and culture learning and use (2nd ed., pp. 107–111). Minneapolis, MN: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota.