Culture Shock @ MindSay

Well, it's happened.  Here we all are, all three of us, moved in and as settled as can be.  In fact, we're settled enough for me to have three jobs right now.  Typical.

But at least I still get to code.  And my family is healthy.  And we have a roof over our heads.  And...you get the picture.

Seth and Rhiannon went into Yellowstone Park today and saw a large grizzly bear dining on a buffalo carcass.  While I experienced a pang on envy regarding that sight, I remain "wow-ed" at their next sight: a raven, fully three feet tall if he was an inch.  How I regret not having seen that.  However, since yellowstone is, for lack of a better phrase, nearly in my back yard, I can't complain too much.

I must beg pardon, my workday begins very early, and I'm off to sleep.  While this is remarkably easy to do, I must confess, it is the time factor which will remain an issue.

Shalom, all.
Kate Gabriel Jones CPC, CPC-GENSG

    I wish I could say that the experience of studying abroad changed me forever; I am now smarter, more confident, more politically aware, and I know what I want to do with my life. Not true. But the experience has indeed changed me. I’ve learned that I am never alone because wherever I go I will be able to make friends. Speaking the same language and being familiar with the same cultural mores are not requirements for getting to know others. There is something powerfully human that stretches beyond race, religion, and creed.

    I also learned about the powerful heartache of leaving behind dear ones. When you study abroad you miss your home but when you return home you miss the family that you established while in your host country. There are people who I grew to love while abroad who I will never see again. And there is not really anybody to talk about this with because I don’t want to be that girl who starts every conversation with “And one time in Costa Rica…” Jokes aren’t as funny and stories aren’t as meaningful to those who don’t share your experience. So instead my memories live inside me and in the words and images of this blog. Though my Costa Rica experience will probably not color the rest of my life it emerges as smiles in my daydreams and lessons learned expressed through my choices.

    To quote my study abroad advisor Brian Souders, “When you get back from studying abroad people want to hear 3 words: It was great!” My profs in CR even recommended coming up with a 30 second speal to share. It’s hard to do! I often find myself tongue tied trying to explain it all.

    As far as reverse culture shock goes I had three big surprises. I forgot how clean the US is! The city streets in Washington D.C., New York, and Baltimore have hardly any trash compared to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In addition the asphalt is so smooth and well maintained. At first DC didn’t look real because the wide flat streets were perfect; I can imagine how excited someone flying into Reagan or Dulles for the first time from another country must feel. As an American I tend to be very critical but we are so lucky for our civil liberties and access to resources.

    Another shock, which I was expecting was the materialism and wastefulness of our culture. I visited my friends as they were moving out at the end of the year and we found computers, lazy boy chairs, desks, wrapped cigars, new stuffed animals with labels, and other perfectly good items in the dumpster. College students should be smart enough to realize their connection to the earth and that it is better to reuse or give something away than send it to sit in a landfill. Needless to say I kept many nice items from dumpster diving. After move out, I stayed with my boyfriend and his family at the beach and I was shocked at the amount of packaging and how much food was wasted.

    My third big surprise was the diversity of the United States. Besides the Caribbean, I had not really seen any black people in CR. It’s so cool that in any random 7-11 on the East Coast you are likely to find people who are Catholic, Jewish, Pacific Islanders, Irish, African American, Indian…this list goes on. I love UMBC because of its student body’s diversity in background, thought, and color.

    Something that has kept me from pining away for Costa Rica is keeping busy. Like I promised I spent time in Gettysburg with my brother and Grandma. I traveled to New York to get ideas for my Costa Rica photography exhibit in September. Most weekends I still headed out to the beach; Sandy Point State Park, Flag Ponds, Ocean City, Cape Henelopen and more. I have also gone salsa and swing dancing. Life is not as exotic now but it still deserves to be lived with full zest. I got an REU grant to study the effectiveness of stream restoration on reducing Nitrogen inputs into the Cheasapeake Bay thus reducing Dead Zones. And I have been hard at work organizing for the next year as president of UMBC’s Students for Environmental Awareness. Being abroad and seeing the rainforests and their inhabitants has increased my commitment to doing my part to help protect our planet.

    I emphatically recommend studying abroad to anyone who has the chance because it helps broaden your perspective so that you understand a little bit more of the home you share with Earth’s ~6.5 billion other citizens. Plus you’ll have good stories for when you grow old. :)

While it doesn’t at first seem like it should be interesting, for the first few weeks I was in Japan I was just amazed by every little thing. Japanese stoplights are exciting (they’re horizontal!). Ultra-advanced cell phones are exciting (although they’re behind on the mp3 player trend). Coin-operated bike racks are exciting. Hot drinks in vending machines are exciting. Everything is exciting! It wasn’t bad enough that I took pictures of every little thing, fortunately, but I’ve known people to go down that road.

Anyway, I’ve since calmed down and settled into a routine. Since I live in the suburbs, I get the feeling that I’m actually getting the everyday life experience (as opposed to the kids living in Roppongi, which is basically Tokyo’s foreigner party district).

My day starts at around 6:30 every morning. I have to get up that early in order to have enough time to do my thing, eat breakfast, and catch an 8-something train. The shower is a particularly special experience, although I don’t use it the way everyone else does. You’re supposed to sit on a small stool and soap down/shave/whatever you do, first, then rinse off and soak in the extremely hot bath for a little while (everyone has to use the same water, so you’d better hope the people before you were clean). I don’t have time for this, unfortunately, but the room can be transformed easily into a shower.

I get in a good twenty minutes of children’s TV programming over a traditional breakfast (a bowl of hot rice with a raw egg cracked over it and some soy sauce, hopefully with miso soup on the side) before I have to run. On that note, milk here is actually half-and-half, if you’ve ever had it. Please try some over your breakfast where possible. Anyway.

I walk about twenty minutes to the train station, because the bus is a hassle and costs money. On my way I pass a lot of neatly uniformed high school students and business people who seem to have never seen a foreigner in their lives. There I meet up with a friend for an hour and a half of commute. We only get to sit if we don’t get on the express train, so our choice is generally made by how much homework and how much sleep we managed the night before.

The local train is nice, but I recommend riding the express just once or twice. They actually pay people to push everyone into the train so the doors can close; there is no breathing room, and people will begin to hate you for your large backpack. Stopping at each station is a lot of fun, especially when everyone falls over onto everyone else. Girls, however, should watch whom they stand next to. Butt-grabbing is not above your average businessman. Your defense is to have your cell phone out, because they will be afraid of you taking their picture in the act. Also, if you are being stared at by anyone, do not act uncomfortable. Stare back. The person will stop almost immediately. Works like a charm.

We debark in Tokyo, for another twenty-minute hike through suburbia. On escalators, you will find that in most places, a set of stairs will be accompanied by an escalator—sometimes there won’t even be stairs. In Japan, people drive on the left side of the street, walk on the left side of the side walk, and stand on the left side of the elevator. Do not stand on the right if you don’t want to make people very, very angry and huffy with you.

And then, we finally arrive at school, a little after ten. Packages from home are a godsend, so frequent mail-checking is a staple of the day. After mail call, we spend a morning in Japanese or Japanese culture, depending on the day, where every little detail of Japan is drilled into our heads for an hour or so. As for lunch, while we thought at first it would be fun to eat “real” ramen all the time, we have since learned that it is expensive and almost impossible to finish a bowl of. We hit the conbini (convenience store) for cheap lunch boxes. Japanese food, if you are not eating crap all the time, is really good for you. From just eating the usual diet and walking a little every day, I’ve already lost about ten pounds, and my case would be considered average.

If it’s Wednesday, we hit yoga after that for an hour. I highly recommend yoga, it works wonders for balance, concentration, and tightening your big American behind. If not, we hang out in the caf’, where the Americans and Japanese mix it up for whacky mealtime adventures. If we’re feeling adventurous, we snack off for a field trip to Tokyo Tower or shopping in Shibuya or Akihabara. Last week we went to Ginza, where we accidentally found ourselves in the Eastern Grounds of the Imperial Palace. Of course, we couldn’t go in—the emperor doesn’t like kids on his lawn—but we photographed the surrounding area plenty.

In the afternoons, I have a class on Japanese comics—I won’t lie, it’s a buffer course, and we watch cartoons—and a special course on non-governmental organizations that I had to go through applications and screenings to get into. This course is actually run on a grant, and it’s sending us all to work at a foundation in India for a few weeks at the end of the semester, all expenses paid. The bulk of the grade is going to come from our fieldwork, so they’re having a hard time finding ways to grade our performance so far. I’m only taking four classes, but I do not recommend any more and I do not recommend any hard classes. You want to have fun abroad. If it’s down to a weekend trip or an A paper, you’ll choose the trip nine times out of ten, I guarantee. Speaking of which, I have a few most excellent ones coming up. Expect to hear more on that later in the week.

After classes, we have a variety of activities to choose from. If it’s a Wednesday, we go spend a few hours at the hot springs. If it’s a Friday, we head to archery club. Any one of a number of shopping districts is a short ride away. In addition, the school keeps us busy with varied culture activities. If we’re tired, it’s straight home (two hours approximately) to a hot mama-made dinner and a few hours of crazy Japanese television.

I get most of my Japanese practice during this time, chatting with my mother, playing with the kids, and just watching the telly. After about nine cups of tea, I head upstairs to lay on my futon and work/play on the Internet before bed. You will learn to live by your futon—Japanese homes are not heated. You also hang your clothes to dry, in you window—so don’t expect privacy.

This is also the time for emails, calling home, and writing posts for you guys, and it’s about 8 a.m. your time, 10 p.m. my time, on the same day. I think this might be the most disorienting thing of them all. You will also feel the loneliest for home around this time. But whatever you do, no matter how lonely you get or how bad your day was, you never go home in that culture shock moment. You ride it out. It is not that bad. Believe me, I know somebody who did, and they will probably always regret it. If you’ve actually made it abroad, you definitely have the will power to make it in your new home. Chin up. It’s gonna be good.

Til next time.

I haven’t experienced culture shock yet. I keep hearing that I’ll probably get it when I go back to the states—yea, you start calling it “the states”, and you sound so cool. Everyone here is really nice, and willing to help you. Tokyo is one of the cleanest, safest cities in the world. The other students are all in the same boat, and thereby really easy to talk to. You’ll find that study abroad is Viagra for your confidence (pardon the crude expression) and making friends becomes easy for even the shiest person. A warning to the ladies, in an exotic place, you are suddenly exotic and you will receive a lot of stares. You just have to deal with it. If you can, welcome to the new you.

To the new you, save your money once you get there as well, because you will want to buy everything you see. If you’re like me, you will. Japan, in particular, is known for a style called “lolita”, which ranges from baby doll to gothic princess. A good lolita ensemble can cost upward of 400$. If you’ve guessed where I’m going with this, you little genius you, I went in for one. I don’t regret it, but nor do I recommend binging like this. Be careful with your money, you have to stretch it all semester!

If I had to say one thing about making the choice to go abroad, I would say that it induces permissive spending. You can say about almost anything that you need it for (insert your country here). I need new clothes, I need an electronic dictionary, I need an iPod—the latest model, of course, so I can be cool in my new country. This, of course, doesn’t change when you actually arrive, so you buy all this stuff you later find out that you didn’t need (except for the iPod, everyone needs that).

For example, I bought an electronic dictionary, and then I signed up for a cell phone—which turned out to include a Japanese-English dictionary. At this point it was too late to return the 200$ electronic dictionary. This scenario of course probably only applies in East Asia right now, since the technology is so advanced, but this applies to everything.

So save your money. Don’t buy anything until you absolutely need it.

I spent the semester before I left freaking out. I wasn’t practicing my Japanese or reading books about Japan, just being consistently worried about the big trip. It’s extremely distracting. In fact, it’s all that’s on your mind. It trumps Christmas and birthdays. You feel scared and nervous and excited all the time, even as far as the plane ride. It only stops after you spend a day getting around, then settle down in your own room, that you realize everything is going to be all right.

That is the best advice I can offer you, aside from “know about your country before you go, so you don’t make an a** of yourself”. I don’t need to say any more. From here on out, this blog will be consistently story time with Taylor. Until next time.