Culture Shock

A couple of weeks ago, after a friend of mine and I were trying really hard to find time between school and work we finally set a date for me to come over to her parents house. She told me how much her mother likes to have people over and cook Persian food for her guests. I had never had Persian food in my life. I was scared to be honest, because I would have felt really embarrassed if I didn’t like the food for some reason. On the other hand, I couldn’t wait to come to someone else’s house and see what they do when the have guests over. Every culture has a different way of treating guests and I wanted to experience this one.

The food was served, and on my table set I had a fork and a spoon. The food included chicken (delicious chicken I must add) and rice with raisins and lentils and plain yogurt with other herbs. Without waiting too much time I started to eat, with the fork. My friend had her sister and her daughter over as well. They were visiting from Iran. The daughter a nine year old was sitting on the table as well and I noticed that she whispered something in Farsi. I couldn’t understand a word yet with her eyes she was telling me that she was talking about me.

Suddenly, my friend started to laugh and I asked her what was so funny. She said, “Oh nothing is just that she was asking why you are eating your rice with the fork. She is wondering if you don’t know how to use spoons.” Well, the thing is that spoons and forks are for Iranians (I’m not sure if this is true for all Persian culture, that is why I’m saying Iranians) what forks and knives are for us westerns.

I like finding little facts like this one. I’m sure that if I ever run into another group of Persian people and I have the opportunity to eat with them, they will appreciate me remembering that little fact.

Greetings

Greeting… hmmm what comes to your mind? Maybe shaking hands, hugging, waving, bowing, a certain word, a kiss, or two kisses….

Every culture has a different way of greeting one another. There is something so personal about greetings, they give a hint of who you are I think. I wasn’t aware of my way of greeting until I moved to this country.

I used to receive English as a second language classes at the University of Toledo in the cold state of Ohio. It was a very interesting experience. Most of my classmates were from Mediterranean or Asian countries. One day, I remember a guy from Venezuela joined the second term of the semester. As soon as he introduced himself to me the first thing that we did was kiss, on the cheek of course. I remember the eyes of everyone looking at us, in uproar maybe because they knew we didn’t know each other. I don’t know. I don’t think I will ever know, but that was nothing compared to what I did months after that.

I was new on this campus and as I got to know some people I became friends with a lovely couple. He was a pastor and she was a teacher. They reminded me to that famous “American Dream” family picture that most of know about. They used to interact with people from different countries because they wanted to help them adjust to this new culture.

One day, after a get together I was talking to Jena, the pastor’s wife. As the conversation winded down I started to say goodbye, not realizing that my head (by inertia I would like to say) started to move towards her to kiss her on the cheek as a goodbye. The woman didn’t scream but I could tell that she freaked out and backed off. As I saw her reaction I realized I was doing that at the wrong time with the wrong people. My face turned red, completely red and in that moment of embarrassment where you get a hundred thoughts in a second I thought about how unfortunate it is that blushing is a universal nonverbal clue of embarrassment. I could feel my face burning in a flame, and kept thinking why isn’t the kissing the universal thing?

Until that moment I didn’t realize how much I missed the closeness to people. Outsiders might see for example, kissing all the people you know when you arrive at a party kinda hectic. It is so hard to draw a line in different cultures. I’ve looked weird to people that I greet the wrong way. Or I seem rude if I don’t hug or kiss someone of my own culture…

I adjusted to this culture very well, to the point that most people don’t have a clue that I am actually not from here. But even small gestures like greetings take me back to a different place. A familiar place that at least I take with me everywhere I go, and defines who I am.

So wherever you go. Just greet how you know to do it and be proud of it. Even if it means you’ll get weird looks and in my case lots of blushing.

Cheaters Should Get Fines or Prison Time….

I heard on a news story last week about a senator for a political party in Colombia who wanted to pass a law that would either fine or give prison time to spouses who cheat.

I have been searching online to find a link to post on this blog that takes you to that information. I found one but the information is in Spanish. So, even if you can’t read Spanish, I thought it is still an interesting issue. For what I heard this politician argued that marriage is a contract and if one of the spouses cheats he or she would be breaking this contract, therefore this person has to pay the consequences for braking it. In the article by the newspaper El Tiempo, the senator said that his objective was to rebuild the value of family and try to protect children from suffering from their parents’ separation due to infidelity.

A long time ago, I was sitting on a church service where the pastor started talking about covenants. He explained how thousands of years ago the way people would symbolize a covenant was through mixing salt. For instance, if two people were setting a covenant both would place and mix salt in one container this simply meant that when one of the parties was able to separate the salt from each of them, then the covenant could be broken.

Separating salt seems an impossible task to me. So, the pastor mentioned how marriage was one kind of covenant… whether you are a religious person or not, maybe you would agree with this idea.

Maybe it is a good idea to put harsh laws on cheater spouses. This doesn’t mean that it would stop infidelity but it might make people think about it twice. After all, nothing is really hidden in this world.