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When I told people in India that I was American, I was fortunate always to receive a warm and enthusiastic reception.  The most typical responses of working class Indians were along the lines of, “America! The land of dreams!”  and “We love Obama!”  Many people described to me their hopes of “making it” to America at some point during their lives.  If they could not afford to do so, then they worked in hopes of being able to send their children.  I avoided admitting the cost of a plane ticket to the US in rupees to enthusiastic patients at a free hospital where I volunteered.  I took pictures with families excited to meet a real American as they told me all about the wonders of America. 

After some time, I couldn’t help but wonder:  Are the people who make it here ever disappointed? 

Yes, America is wonderful.  Yes I am appreciative and generally proud of my citizenship and country.  My travels have enlightened me about other cultures, but also my own and I realize how fortunate I am to call this most coveted place home.  But, I still wonder, is it all that it’s cracked up to be?  In talking to some Indians about the US, one would think America to be a place free of corruption, violence, injustice, and poverty, a place where everyone truly has an equal opportunity to be what he or she would like.  And yet, that is far from the truth.  So I wonder, are immigrants to the US ever disappointed?

For Indians, there are certain improvements in quality of life here that are undeniable.  Saifali explained one example of this is terms of space in the library.  (He’d previously been marveling at how empty the library was, though I did explain that one wouldn’t typically expect to find the basement of the library jam packed on a Friday evening.)  He said, just look around here at all this space.  If we were in India, this library might only be one story; forget about us having our own table to sit at; we might have nowhere to sit at all and it would be loud because there would be so many people.

But improvements in physical living conditions, comforts and securities surely come with a tradeoff of living in a place likely so different from any they have previously known.  Everyday accepted practices, religious holidays, and clothing that is so normal at home become unusual anomalies here.  The young girl I tutor tells me all the time that she wishes to go back to Nepal.  She hasn’t adjusted to life here yet: school is difficult, English is difficult, and connecting with friends is difficult.  She can’t understand the complicated reasons why her family had to leave home, she just knows there are a lot of things in the US that are hard and that she doesn’t like.  Her older brother and parents seem slightly happier here than she, perhaps because they have a more vivid recollection and understanding of why they left.  Her brother told me that when he left Nepal, he thought that everywhere in the world was the same; he didn’t know that the US would be different and he is pleased with many of the differences he sees.  I still don’t know that the pros outweigh the cons or that American lives up the expectations of all the refugees and immigrants that come here.

I found that this chapter removed many of the assumptions that I had previously held concerning my competencies in english, particularly in conversation analysis.  According to the author, native speakers in a language have a grasp on the intricacies of interruptions, attention getting, topic nomination, topic shifting, avoidance, topic repair, and clarification.  However, I feel as though I not only fail to properly express myself in these areas on a regular basis but also was largely unaware that these were topics that could be learned at all.  I merely assumed that since most individuals are like me and have not mastered the finer points of conversation that it simply could not be done or perfection at conversation was an inborn trait.  I found that it was much more useful to simply learn to deal properly with all aspects of awkward misinterpretations, interruptions, attention getting, and the like as it arose since being a master in conversation also does little to ensure you will be able to properly employ any of these strategies since there is no way to gauge the other individual in the conversation's competencies.  Awkward conversation seems inevitable, and when I fail to get another's attention or fail to effectively shift a topic I have never considered this a result of not employing the proper cultural phrases, intonations, and gestures but rather a result of the other person's disinterestedness.  I believe that this ignorance also spilled into my understandings of other cultures as well since I assumed that the secondary meanings and pragmatics of phrases in America translated into similar understandings in other cultures and vice versa.  Of course I realized that there are certain ridiculous phrases that cannot even be translated such as "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" and still keep their meaning, but i did not fully comprehend the cultural phrases that pervade every aspect of daily living such as a conversation between me and my roomate:

"Yo!" = I have entered the house

"whatsup?" = how was your day?

"same-old same-old" = My day was normal and nothing has changed between now and the last time I described it to you

"dinner?" = would you like to make dinner soon or have you already eaten?

"we'll see" = No I have not had dinner and am not yet sure when I would like to eat or if I would like to eat the same thing that you want

Although I always knew that direct translations of exchanges such as this do little in the way of conveying the same intent in another culture, i always assumed that they would remain within the same parameters.  That is to say that a form of the question "how are you" (aka whatsup) would mean "how was your day" in other language and cultures when in fact it could be that their understanding of "how was your day" is phrased in a question like "did the birds sing today" or some similar phrase.  Moreover, I would argue that exchanges such as these make up a large percentage of what a person says on a daily basis.  The author suggests that the solution to this problem lies in teaching proper cultural phrase exchange and meaning while teaching vocabulary and grammar of the foreign language to students.  However, I think that this is an impossible task as these types of exchanges are dependent upon not only the status of the two individuals in each other's lives, their occupations, their genders, etc. such that the same exchange that I had with my roommate would be entirely different if I were speaking to my mother, my brother, a friend that I do not live with, a guest of little significance, a guest of great importance, the plumber etc.  and each exchange would have the same meaning with no words that actually reflected that meaning.  In addition, such phrases that are spoken to individuals in each capacity change either more or less frequently according to the culture and in some cases the previous phrase that was used becomes more of an insult or cultural taboo.  As a result this cannot be properly taught due to the disconnect between the time of study and immersion into the other culture which may cause unintended affronts.  For example, saying "welcome home woman" as opposed to "welcome home sweetheart" may cause strife as a result of the improper teaching of English to the speaker.

Within this chapter much of the information that I have already studied concerning culture shock and the marked differences between cultures and its effects were repeated.  What I found particularly interesting however, was the introduction of a self-perception element of cultural difference and the effect that it has on language learning ability.  According to the author and research conducted on the subject, there is a direct correlation between the perception of social distance or the number and significance of cultural differences between the language learning individual and the people in the society of the target language.  The studies showed that the optimal point for language learning lies somewhere between the normal social distance between the two cultures as a whole and complete and total immersion into the target language's culture and lies closer to total immersion.  I find this understanding fascinating as it applies to my own experiences immersing myself in other cultures, specifically that in Costa Rica where i was able to obtain fluency extremely quickly.  I had previously understood this to be a result of having fully adopted the Costa Rican culture which accelerated my learning of the language past what it could have been otherwise.  However, with this new information, I believe that I may have deluded myself into thinking that I had fully accomplished this as in my past reflections on culture shock I recalled the reverse flow of information between myself and the local tico culture.  It may have been a possibility that it was my lack of full immersion that perpetuated my fluency rather than my perceived cultural switch.  However, I doubt that this is the case since the chapter cited this effect as a result of "perceived social distance" and my "perceived social distance" from the culture at the time was none.

In addition, I found the description of the Anomie state in the chapter to be particularly compelling.  The Anomie state is essentially a state of transition in which an individual begins to think and dream in the target language for the first time which is also associated with cultural confusion of assimilating into the target culture.  I find the author's description of the Anomie state interesting because he describes how it is a one-time rock bottom occurrence in the transition between cultures.  However, in my own exploits i believe that I have encountered this experience multiple times in transitioning into speaking in spanish in multiple contexts.  I have always rationalized this strange experience as the "thinking in no language" in between giving up on thinking in one language to transition into thinking in another.  I always took this as a necessary transitionary phase to occur when traveling in and out of your native and other cultures, for example, in my travels to Costa Rica, i first experienced this Anomie point in becoming fluent in spanish and then again when coming back to America and having to transition back into english.  Each time that I have travelled to a spanish speaking country whether CR or otherwise I have experienced this same event.

I also found the author's argument concerning teaching English as a world language to be counterintuitive.  He argues that for a language such as English to be taught in a country such as China it is more advantageous for a native chinese speaker who has learned English in school to teach others the language since they have a greater understanding of what transitional elements lie in switching from their native language to English.  An American who is fluent in the chinese language would not have these advantages and would inevitably teach English to chinese children in the way it was taught to him which would not be necessarily as conducive to their particular learning style.  However, I believe that a native chinese speaker who taught other native speakers English would not only result in the chinese-English that he describes but would also rob the students from learning the cultural elements of the language as well as the language itself.  Without the cultural understandings, the students would essentially be learning vocabulary and grammar rather than a language.  Specific cultural intonations to convey emotion, elements of false speech, and other intricacies of the English language would be completely lost to them and the hybrid language that they would develop would not be effective in neither their native culture nor their target culture.

Unfortunately, I was unable to access the culture shock video of University of Richmond international students.  Instead, I decided to watch an online presentation by a student at Columbia University who explains the processes involved in culture shock for those entering America from foreign nations and relates his own personal experiences about coming to America.  This presentation can be accessed at www.internationalstudent.com.  In his presentation, he outlines that culture shock consists of three phases: the "honeymoon" phase, the "what am I doing here" phase, and the "where is happy hour" phase.  He describes that the "honeymoon" phase is identified by a sense of everything around you becoming hazy and you forgetting who you are in the overwhelming amount of input that you are observing, all of which evokes an awe struck type of emotion.  Next he argues is the "what am I doing here" phase in which after a prolonged period of feeling as if they are not themselves, the individual attempts to revert their personality back into what it was before they became immersed in American culture.  However, in doing so, many students find that they cannot successfully function within the American culture as the person that they are accustomed to being and the panic that this revelation results in is built upon by other difficulties such as their inability to convey themselves and what they wish to say to others properly and their lack of deep friendships that they have developed with anyone in the new culture in the short amount of time which they have spent in it.  As a result, the student seeks to surround himself or herself with others who can most closely relate to their difficulties, namely those from the same culture or region of the world.  This action simply prolongs the length of the "what am I doing here phase" until the individual builds strong relationships with those in the new culture and puts forth a concerted effort to identify and embrace their new place in their community.  When this occurs, the "where is happy hour" phase occurs in which the student acquires a permanent emotional equilibrium somewhere between the "honeymoon" and "what am I doing here" phases.  The statistical surveys provided in the presentation suggest that the average amount of time that process of culture shock takes is 3-4 months but it could take as little as a few weeks or as many as six or seven months for some people to progress through these phases.

Although the presentation is based not only on the personal experiences of those at Columbia University and the statistics that they have gathered and its conclusions no doubt resonate with many people who have come to America, I believe from my own experiences of traveling the world that there is no such thing as an American becoming culture shocked.  Or at least, the effect on American individuals is extremely diminished.  In my own experiences, a vast majority of foreign cultures place the idea of America on a pedestal and therefore their perceptions of Americans.  As a result, whenever I would attempt to immerse myself into a culture I would find myself repelled, not out of an affront at my social shortcomings, but out of a desire of those around me to preserve my culture as much as possible.  I have no intention of appearing arrogant in this regard, but even after spending months in Costa Rica attempting to fully assimilate and immerse myself in the culture i found that the new friends that I had made wanted to talk about Eminem and school in America and what my life back home was like instead of allowing me to essentially forget who I was and become one of them.  They never wanted to speak spanish with me, only ever their broken and developing English.  On multiple occasions I was invited to come and speak and help teach english at the local school and I was even broadcasted on their national radio, but again, to my dismay, in english and not spanish.  I find that this is an opposite type of culture shock, one that is not an overwhelming drowning in a sea of the foreign thoughts, feelings, and emotions of others experience when they come to America.  Instead it is a sharing of the thoughts, feelings, and predispositions of one person, the American divided equally and in manageable amounts to all those within the hosting culture.  The flow of information is reversed.

I have never encountered a culture that was disinterested in Americans to the point where it would provide a true culture shock experience.  Instead, most other cultures either love Americans, as I experienced in Costa Rica, or hate Americans, as I experienced in France.  In the two weeks that I stayed in Paris, culture shock in any regard was unattainable due to the vehemence with which the french people that I interacted with opposed any sharing of anything with an American.  As a result of the artificial wall that they erected between their culture and myself I was unable to experience much more than sight seeing and remained relatively oblivious to their view of the world.  Unlike the cultural exchanges previously described this was one of no information flow whatsoever between the french people that I met and myself and that is why I believe that there was no element of culture shock.

I made this artifact to review working with past tense, which was the tense I had the most difficulty with last semester. In the slide show, I describe India, what I did there, and what I enjoyed.  

My narration includes:  I lived in India for four months.  There I was a student.  I studied Hindi and Indian culture.  In Jaipur, I lived with an Indian family.  When I was in India, I wore Indian clothing.  I ate Indian food and now, I think Indian food is great.  Indian culture is very different from American culture.  India is very interesting and very colorful.  I went to many places; I travelled by train. In Agra, I saw the Taj Mahal.  The Taj Mahal was very beautiful. This photo is also the Taj Mahal.  Then I saw the Red Fort.  I also went to a small village.  I learned about healthcare.  In Amritsar, I saw the Golden Temple.  I went to Varanasi.  Varanasi is a very old city.  In Varanasi, I went to an Indian wedding with my friend.  In Kolkata, I met many nice people.  I hope to return to India.

voicethread.com/share/2547060/

Hindi uses post positions instead of prepositions as we use in English.  Post positions change the form of the subject and adjectives that they follow in different ways depending on the gender of the subject/adjective and whether it is singular or plural.  I did some exercises out of my book early on to help me recall the necessary changes, though this is something that I should refresh regularly; the changes are small and easy to forget, but would certainly be noticed in conversation with a native speaker.