Culture Shock
One of the main objectives of traveling abroad is to experience a new culture, way of life and be in a different setting altogether while leading a regular daily life. In the process, there are bound to be numerous differences to the life you are used to at home and some take longer to adjust to than others. We all eventually get accustomed to the way of life but they always seem a bit odd initially only because we aren’t used to it and that isn’t our normal whereas in a different city, that might be all they know.
One such difference for me was one’s daily schedule, specifically meal times. As part of the Spanish culture, dinner isn’t served or eaten until at least 9:30 pm and even that is sometimes early. A late dinner means everything in the evening is pushed back and suddenly all your evening activities planned are so late. Staying out late and being awake until very late is not as much of a problem for me, provided it starts earlier in the evening but having to meet friends and go out for a meal only around 10:30 pm was very difficult for me to get used to. It was especially difficult during the first few weeks but as the semester went on, I got better at dealing with it and got used to a ‘Spanish style’ daily routine. It has been easy to work around once I got used to it but crossing the first bridge of getting used to it in the first place was a big hurdle to cross.
Another big difference between my culture and Spanish culture is the fact that everything is closed on a Sunday. Everything, from supermarkets to clothing stores are closed on a Sunday; restaurants are the only things that were open but we still always had to check to confirm because there were some that were closed on a Sunday. As someone who did all her grocery shopping and general errands on a Sunday, this was very crippling. This was something that I was going to face for the next four months and so I simply get used to it and plan my weeks accordingly. It definitely took some time to get used to because I would often forget and when I set out to run such errands on a Sunday, I would find all shops closed and then would have to do them on Monday or spread them out during the week. After a couple such instances, I got used to it and learned to work around it.
I think the main stages of culture shock is essentially being exposed to the different aspects, adapting to it and living life in a new city with these differences. It took me some time at the beginning to get used to a different way of life but I think I did very well in trying to adapt my lifestyle with the local way of life. Immersing myself into their culture was definitely the best way for me to gain the most from this experience!
