First Impressions…

Cross-cultural programs are notoriously busy!  We are taking a full load of college courses while navigating a gigantic city (think NYC with 10x less infrastructure) with traffic patterns that aren’t really patterns at all.  Everyone and everything needs to be filtered through Spanish, and the history and customs and politics and every other thing is foreign.  It’s work!  It’s new and stressful.  

Amidst all the stress and challenges of our new milieu, we are thankful that we have each other and the regular faces of the program – our leaders (Celia and Kris), our Spanish teachers, our topical lecturers.  And of course there are our families!  Families form the bedrock of our cultural learning here.  We go home to them every night, we talk about church, homelife, politics and customs with them.  They worry about our well-being and they are patient with our language.  They are so patient with our language! 

Even with all the support that we have from family and others, it still feels strange, and fitting in sometimes feels impossible.  Here’s a student’s perspective on ‘fitting in’:

I spent the first several days here in Peru wanting to blend in as much as possible. I considered dying my hair darker so that I wouldn’t be as recognizable as someone from the United States: I would think constantly about how I could blend in: can I look more Peruvian? How are these women dressing? How do they wear their hair? How do they interact with other people on the bus, in the streets, or in the market? I have noticed a lot of activewear and tennis shoes. Women here are wearing flare-leg pants or straight-leg jeans. Often they have long straight dark hair that is cut all to the same length. I was hyper-aware of my taper-leg skinny jeans and my lighter + layered hair, which I often have pulled back into a ponytail. I don’t blend in at all really, except for mimicking how Peruvian women act. Still, I laugh too loud when I walk with friends and hesitate too much when I am trying to figure out whether the cashier is asking for cash or card or if I want a receipt. I have been finding myself wishing I wasn’t so obviously from the United States. It’s exhausting, I wish I could navigate better; I wish I could speak better Spanish; I wish I could look more Peruvian. I keep falling short in ways that I feel are intrinsically part of me. I feel frustrated when I spend half an hour, my maps rerouting, turning in circles trying to find a park when I can usually rely on my sense of direction to get me where I need to go. I feel inadequate as a communicator when I have miscommunicated important information because I am still learning Spanish. These, and dozens of other parts of myself that I hold dear feel like they are crumbling. I can only hope that there is some light, somewhere, that is revealed when I strip down all of the attributes and skills, and ways I used to understand who I am. 

This past Sunday, I knew I was going to church with my host family. I was already experiencing some stress regarding the 3-hour long service that was awaiting me. I braided my hair, put on my skirt and corresponding shirt, sweater, etc. I was ready. I wanted to show my host mom a) that I was ready to do this thing that she cared about and b) that I owned clothes other than the two pairs of jeans that I’ve worn every day since I had arrived. Fifteen minutes before we were to leave, she knocked on my door. I could tell from the moment she opened her mouth that she was uncomfortable. I wasn’t dressed formally enough for church. I was stunned. She had just told me that jeans were more formal than the skirt I had chosen. I broke in that moment more than I had at any other point in this trip. Some deep-seated feeling of inadequacy flushed through me. I knew that I didn’t understand, and it hurt. Who am I without my communication and navigation skills, and who am I without my ability to understand? Frankly, I am unsure.

-Maggie Garber