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Post #1: Pre-Departure Expectations

I chose to participate in the Summer Language Abroad program in Costa Rica for a few reasons: I wanted to have a smaller spanish language immersion experience before my semester abroad in Chile (spring 2024), I wanted to try to both improve my spanish and do a physics-related internship during the summer, and I wanted to have a cultural immersion experience in a Central American country (since I went to Spain with ND summer 2022 and will study abroad in South America). Initially, I was more focused on the first two reasons—growing my academic proficiency—but as I’ve been working through the preparation activities, I’ve seen that I need (and want) to put more focus on cultivating my cultural competency while abroad this summer.  I’ve realized just how unique and special an opportunity it is to be able to not only live in a different country, but to have the resources of Notre Dame and the Praxis Center (the program I’m doing my immersion through) to dive deeper—academically and more casually—into immersion in Costa Rica. I’m extremely excited and eager for the exponential growth in knowledge and experiences I am about to encounter, but I am also trying to be mindful about the ways I’m preparing myself to most effectively absorb and reflect on my time abroad.

I hope to grow in my intercultural competency, my ability to critically analyze my own culture(s), and my ability to successfully bridge gaps between cultures to form stronger, more informed, and more thoughtful relationships with others. Using the tools from metrics like the IDI and other classes/conversations that I will have abroad will give me the language to articulate and reflect on my own experiences. I think that the IDI’s descriptions of the “minimization” mindset accurately reflect how I currently address and interact with culture and cultural differences. For most of my life, I’ve felt that I don’t have a strong “culture” that I identify with, and so have tried to approach cultural differences with an emphasis on common humanity while also being respectful of cultural practices or beliefs that have differed from my own personal beliefs. However, after coming to college, I’ve come to discover that although I may not feel like I come from a strongly rooted ethnic or national identity, I come from a unique set of communities—family, the city I grew up, white middle class American suburbia, etc.—that have practices, rituals, and ways of perceiving the world that have influenced me heavily. It will likely take longer than just this summer, but I think that the best way to be able to acknowledge and understand cultural differences—and be able to bridge them effectively—is to live within a culture and try to understand its values, function, and practices. 

My hope for improving my language abilities is that I will feel much more comfortable speaking in Spanish, especially with native speakers. I think that my class in grammar and conversation will definitely help with this, as one of my biggest embarrassments when trying to speak is that my foundation of grammar and vocabulary is a bit shaky and patched together. However, I think that simply being forced to speak Spanish in casual everyday contexts—with my host family, teachers, classmates, servers, people on the street—is what will propel my growth in proficiency and confidence. I know that this goal will require work on my end both intellectually by working hard in classes, and on a more personal level by overcoming my embarrassment of making mistakes and reframing them as learning opportunities.

My current plan to ensure I’m actively reflecting is to journal while abroad. Instead of a traditional journaling method—which I’ve always found myself unable to uphold for extended periods of time—I’ve decided to keep a travel journal separated into the five different sections Impressions, Descriptive, Narrative, Expressive, and Personal. I may alter the categories a bit, or potentially blend some together, but I think this method will allow me to have more focused entries; my biggest qualm with journaling is that I always have too many thoughts and want to incorporate too many different ideas into a journal entry than I have the patience for. Thus, separating journal entries by intention will make them much more manageable. Furthermore, I think especially the Expressive and Personal sections will be wonderful places to expand into the type of deep, critical reflections I’m hoping to have while abroad and which are hard to fully flesh out when trying to talk about everything in a singular daily journal entry.

I can’t wait to start on my summer journey, and look forward to writing again from Costa Rica!

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#2: Bills, musicians, and prayers: Critical Incidents in Ecuador

Imanalla! Ñukaka Chihiromi kani. Kunanka Ecuadorpa kapakllakta Kitupi kawsashpa kichwa shimitami yachakuni.

It is my second week in Quito, Ecuador, and I would like to share some of the Critical Incidents I have encountered. As the title suggests, I have three small stories.

Bills: how are we supposed to pay at restaurants?

Located right on the equator (hence “La República del Ecuador“) and bestowed with the diverse nature of the Pacific Ocean, the Andean mountain range, and the Amazon, Ecuador has unique and delicious cuisine. Naturally, I cannot resist my desire to try some Ecuadorian food in local restaurants. So I enter a restaurant, but then suddenly I have a slight sense of panic.

  • When should I pay? Before seating? After the meal?
  • If I get a bill, then will I pay at my table or go to the cashier?

I feel confused, and I actually felt the same way when I moved to the United States. The payment custom at American restaurants is surprisingly different from that of Japan and the United Kingdom. So, being aware of these three norms, I genuinely did not know which of these applies to the Ecuadorian culture; or, using one of the metaphors introduced in the Module, I have three glasses that I have customized in order to look at Japanese, British, and American cultures, but I could not see it well with any of these at first in Ecuador.

After some trials with fear and curiosity, I have figured out that the payment custom really depends on each place. There are restaurants that you pay first at the cashier when ordering, pay at the table, or pay at the cashier after the meal (but I haven’t seen anything like payment like in the US where your waiter reads your credit card, comes back with it, you sign on a receipt and add some tip). I have learned that it is totally acceptable to ask them directly about when and how I should pay, because the system ultimately depends on each restaurant (what’s more, even 10-dollar bills are sometimes not accepted, so it is better to ask them if you only have them).

Musicians: should we give money to strangers?

When having my lunch at those Ecuadorian local restaurants, sometimes a musician comes in and suddenly starts playing an instrument or singing. It was a little shocking to me because other customers and staff around me were not showing any shock as if it was normal. Though I almost immediately knew that they came for earning some coins, I still did not know whether I should give them money or not.

On one hand, I tell myself, “Just give them some money, it won’t hurt me while it might mean more than it for them.” On the other side, I also cannot help myself thinking: “Giving them a little money does not ultimately help them; if I give them, other tourists might be looked at as money trees; or, in the first place, I don’t even know if they are really in need of help.”

When I was in Japan, I hardly thought about this question because it was very rare to be begged there. However, in societies with huge economic discrepancies, it is inevitable to think about it, not only because there are such occasions, but also because it is not so rare for someone to choose to give them money or donate some of their belongings.

Every time I face this kind of case, I feel a little confused either way; if I choose to give them money, I think “Will what I have just done help them get out of this situation? Aren’t I just being a hypocrite?”; if I choose not to, then I feel guilty because I would barely get any harm by sharing and I could have made their day a little better. My cultural glasses simply cannot find an answer to these questions even now.

Prayers: what should I do during the prayer before the meal?

Since coming to Notre Dame, it has not been rare to see Christian people pray before starting their meal. It was a little shocking (not in a bad sense) to me at first, simply because I have grown up in an environment without such customs of praying before meals.

The large majority of the population in Ecuador is Catholic, and my host family was also praying before their meal on my first day. I felt awkward. I identify myself as a secular person with a bleached background in Buddhism and Shintoism. I did not know how to pray in a Christian way; I am not familiar with what kind of importance the prayer has; or what non-Christians are supposed to do during the prayer. I could not see well through my cultural glasses. I still do not know.

I do not know if they noticed me being a bit awkward at it, but they no longer pray before our meal since my third day. I haven’t asked them why either, because I am not ready to ask them about religion, because sometimes it can be personal or sensitive. I do hope that I will learn how to cope with customary differences arising from religions in general because they are ubiquitous in the world, sometimes even with the potential of causing aggressive friction.

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¡Vamos a Madrid!

Hello everyone! My name is Evie Garces-Foley and in just a week I’ll be in Madrid beginning my summer abroad to study Spanish. I was born in Oxnard, California but grew up in Annandale, Virginia, outside of Washington, DC. The last time I lived abroad was in 5th grade when my family moved to Ljubljana, Slovenia for 5 months. I’m lucky to have lessons and memories from my time in Ljubljana as I venture out to Madrid, but this doesn’t mean that I’m not a bit terrified to be moving to a city where I don’t know a single person and am definitely less than proficient in the language. 

In Slovenia I discovered much of what I now hope to improve upon while living in Madrid. It was there that I realized that there is a lot more to the world than just Virginia and California, which sparked my interest in the variety of the human experience and the joys of independence. For example, the realization that it’s not ‘normal’ in every country to have a selection of 50 different name-brand salad dressings at your local supermarket has now become the goal to reflect upon my biases of American exceptionalism while learning the cultural norms of another country.

I also got my first taste of independence in Ljubljana, which is now something I hope to fully embrace in Madrid. This means embracing the opportunities that exist for me to explore on my own, as well as embracing the discomfort that comes along with this. I’ve never lived in a city or explored a country on my own before, and although I’ll have my host family and people I meet in Madrid along with me on this adventure, I don’t want solo travel to be a barrier to my full immersion into Spanish culture and language.

Seeing as I truly have no idea what I’m getting myself into (at this moment I don’t even know where I’m living or what classes I’m taking or anyone else in my program), I’m looking forward to continuing these blog posts and seeing how much I grow in the next 2 months. Not only do I hope to improve my conversational and academic Spanish skills, but I also hope to look back at this post in August and say wow 1. This girl actually had no idea what she was getting herself into and 2. I’m more interculturally competent, independent, and badass for having done this. 

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Preparing for surprises

I have lived most of my life in a coastal town in South India that has just two types of weather — pouring rain and scorching sun. The books I read, however, were set in the strange environs of the stuffy Victorian parlour or the unforgiving moral climate of Hawthorne’s 17th century New England. My initial encounters with British and American culture were mediated by the distorting influences of cultural distance and the literary narrative. In August 2022, I moved to South Bend, Indiana, USA, to do my PhD in English. While the last few months have brought me many enriching academic experiences, the unfamiliarity of South Bend taught me lessons that I had not quite anticipated.

Take the weather, for example. Before coming to the US, I assumed I understood what fall, winter, or spring meant from having previously experienced milder versions of seasonal changes. Needless to say, I was surprised by the distinctness of seasons and the speed with which they change. The contrasting perspective made me recognise the influence of geography on culture. Surviving the South Bend winter and experiencing first-hand the relief of the first sunny days of spring helped me understand the biting irony of T.S. Eliot’s famous opening line from The Wasteland, “April is the cruellest month” — an irony I may have missed completely when reading it in the summer heat of my hometown Kochi.

Moving to the US has widened my cultural awareness, which in turn makes me a better scholar of American literature. As I get ready to travel to Munich for a four-week intensive German course, I do so in the knowledge that travel and first-hand experience can teach me things that no amount of research can prepare me for.