Welcome back
"Breathe through it, write a list of desires
Make a toast, make a wish, slash some tires
Paint a heart repeating, beating "don't give up, don't give up, don't give up."
Living in a foreign country and communicating in a foreign language is hard. I'm white, a citizen of a powerful country, and living in a Western society similar to my own and am finding it very difficult to live the day-to-day life: socializing, buying a cellphone, searching for cold medicine. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to be a racial minority coming from a struggling nation and having any energy at the end of the day. Needless to say, I have a deeper respect for anyone who immigrates to a new country.
Everything is getting a little bit easier every day, but the pattern is more of a sine wave rather than a consistent upward line. There's a part of me that hates anyone who tells me how "amazing" my life must be--an assumption that oversimplifies all of my experiences and makes me feel ashamed of any day that leaves me contemplating an early plane trip back to Colorado, to sit in the mountains with a giant mug of coffee just breathing in the thin crisp air and shuffling through the pine needles with my toes. Instead, I'm trying to push aside any thoughts of how I "should" be feeling and let myself sometimes scowl at the scarf-clad stick figures they call Italians (who were scowling first) while missing home so much it hurts.
Often the living abroad experience emphasizes how much one learns about other cultures, but I really think it's first and foremost about how much one can learn about themselves and their own culture in relation to other cultures. I can already appreciate this in how much more I'm aware myself and the extent of which my thought processes have been influenced by my culture. Before coming here, I honestly thought that the U.S. is without a particular, definite culture outside of jazz and fast food; an idea that now I would fully debate against. True, America doesn't have the traditions and long standing heritage that so many other cultures carry, but we absolutely have a unique set of behaviors and codes that we follow and expect others to follow (many of which I am very proud). I do think that there is more to be said on this, but we class looming before me for which I haven't yet done the homework, I leave it to another day.
Make a toast, make a wish, slash some tires
Paint a heart repeating, beating "don't give up, don't give up, don't give up."
Living in a foreign country and communicating in a foreign language is hard. I'm white, a citizen of a powerful country, and living in a Western society similar to my own and am finding it very difficult to live the day-to-day life: socializing, buying a cellphone, searching for cold medicine. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to be a racial minority coming from a struggling nation and having any energy at the end of the day. Needless to say, I have a deeper respect for anyone who immigrates to a new country.
Everything is getting a little bit easier every day, but the pattern is more of a sine wave rather than a consistent upward line. There's a part of me that hates anyone who tells me how "amazing" my life must be--an assumption that oversimplifies all of my experiences and makes me feel ashamed of any day that leaves me contemplating an early plane trip back to Colorado, to sit in the mountains with a giant mug of coffee just breathing in the thin crisp air and shuffling through the pine needles with my toes. Instead, I'm trying to push aside any thoughts of how I "should" be feeling and let myself sometimes scowl at the scarf-clad stick figures they call Italians (who were scowling first) while missing home so much it hurts.
Often the living abroad experience emphasizes how much one learns about other cultures, but I really think it's first and foremost about how much one can learn about themselves and their own culture in relation to other cultures. I can already appreciate this in how much more I'm aware myself and the extent of which my thought processes have been influenced by my culture. Before coming here, I honestly thought that the U.S. is without a particular, definite culture outside of jazz and fast food; an idea that now I would fully debate against. True, America doesn't have the traditions and long standing heritage that so many other cultures carry, but we absolutely have a unique set of behaviors and codes that we follow and expect others to follow (many of which I am very proud). I do think that there is more to be said on this, but we class looming before me for which I haven't yet done the homework, I leave it to another day.