Journal Entry 5 - SDLC 105 - Rein

[Christopher Carl Rein]

Besides technical issues and a surprisingly retro feel for a video made in the past decade, the Culture Shock video was interesting. The idea of certain linguistic or cultural “scripts” does seem to match closely with reality, not just for English. I have no good examples for Persian, but in Moroccan Arabic, to say hi to someone in a casual manner, you would ask la bas, which literally means “not bad.” The lack of knowledge of the context and subtle nuances of a language or the local people is certainly frustrating for me, but I have not experienced culture shock in a meaningful way even while living in Morocco for some time. Perhaps something about the temporary nature of my stay in Morocco combined with a lack of stress and largely staying with other Americans helped, but I cannot relate very strongly to the experiences of those in the video.