Today in Casa de Libros I was reading the synopsis of whatever that book is by Stephen King about the dome that appears and traps a town. Being in the bookstore brought on an odd realization, a sensation. I think it was the combination of the familiar bookstore and book smells, the seeing books by authors I'd read translated on the tables, the sudden surge of memories of being in bookstores in America and how similar they really all are, all such professional bookstores. As you can see by that grammatically unparallel and confusing sentence, I don't know exactly why I sudden realized it, but realize it I did.
I think I'm going to have more culture shock coming home than coming here. It didn't take me long to figure out why. See, all our lives we've learned about other cultures. In that way we are half-prepared to experience them. We already have a view established when we approach, interact, or integrate (temporarily) with other cultures. Of course there is some shock, but we're ready for it. We have already experienced bits of it during the learning process, the pre-engagement with the culture.
All our lives we've learned supplementals about our own culture, too, but it's different. It's ours. It's fed into our cultural identities, not into a box in the brain apart. And that's just superficial; really what we learn about our culture is unimportant. We learn our culture through living it, we are our culture.
Cue study abroad: minor culture shock, at least in the case of an American going to Spain. Maybe it's not even really culture "shock". We always know we're going to go back to our culture. Over the semester we spend hours in quick laughing sentences like, "They'd never let us sit at this table so long in an American restaurant" and sometimes longer discussions of cultural differences.
Cue going home. Here's where the real shock begins. We've spent who knows how long building a real concept of a foreign culture. Not living it like we lived and learned our own culture, but not learning it in a book, either - somewhere in between. We return to our cultures with these new concepts in tow: a fully developed, quasi-real concept of a foreign culture. Suddenly we're living our normal lives - but with a completely new frame of reference, a completely different lived life to compare our normal lives to. We find ourselves continuing to compare, but this time our own culture seems the "victim" of the comparative study. It's the "new" and the new culture is the referent. We've been turned around on our heads, and our heads have been turned around on us, our eyes turned around on us.
I put Stephen King back on the shelf and had this intense realization. It was an uncomfortable one. For a moment I had transplanted myself to a bookstore in the US, looking back at Sevilla, instead of the other way around. I'd realized that the culture I love so much and will be happy to return to, the culture that is a great percentage of my identity, is never going to be quite the same.
At least, not at first. I also understand that the comparisons will rapidly fade away. They'll be strongest at first but dwindle until maybe every once in a while the feeling of cultural limbo, uncertainty, self-doubt, will return with some new reflection on a concrete difference. But they will be passing moments, and will certainly not define me or my culture. I'll just cast around for a moment, lost in a familiar bookstore.
I think I'm going to have more culture shock coming home than coming here. It didn't take me long to figure out why. See, all our lives we've learned about other cultures. In that way we are half-prepared to experience them. We already have a view established when we approach, interact, or integrate (temporarily) with other cultures. Of course there is some shock, but we're ready for it. We have already experienced bits of it during the learning process, the pre-engagement with the culture.
All our lives we've learned supplementals about our own culture, too, but it's different. It's ours. It's fed into our cultural identities, not into a box in the brain apart. And that's just superficial; really what we learn about our culture is unimportant. We learn our culture through living it, we are our culture.
Cue study abroad: minor culture shock, at least in the case of an American going to Spain. Maybe it's not even really culture "shock". We always know we're going to go back to our culture. Over the semester we spend hours in quick laughing sentences like, "They'd never let us sit at this table so long in an American restaurant" and sometimes longer discussions of cultural differences.
Cue going home. Here's where the real shock begins. We've spent who knows how long building a real concept of a foreign culture. Not living it like we lived and learned our own culture, but not learning it in a book, either - somewhere in between. We return to our cultures with these new concepts in tow: a fully developed, quasi-real concept of a foreign culture. Suddenly we're living our normal lives - but with a completely new frame of reference, a completely different lived life to compare our normal lives to. We find ourselves continuing to compare, but this time our own culture seems the "victim" of the comparative study. It's the "new" and the new culture is the referent. We've been turned around on our heads, and our heads have been turned around on us, our eyes turned around on us.
I put Stephen King back on the shelf and had this intense realization. It was an uncomfortable one. For a moment I had transplanted myself to a bookstore in the US, looking back at Sevilla, instead of the other way around. I'd realized that the culture I love so much and will be happy to return to, the culture that is a great percentage of my identity, is never going to be quite the same.
At least, not at first. I also understand that the comparisons will rapidly fade away. They'll be strongest at first but dwindle until maybe every once in a while the feeling of cultural limbo, uncertainty, self-doubt, will return with some new reflection on a concrete difference. But they will be passing moments, and will certainly not define me or my culture. I'll just cast around for a moment, lost in a familiar bookstore.
