Clash of Cultures
There are lots of anecdotes when you travel outside
your country and the situations when cultures crashes are very particular
especially when you took part in an Argentinian exchange student
program in the City of Austin, TX located in USA. First of all, I
have to say that it was awesome how English movies describes so well many and
different aspects of the reality in the city such as peoples, meals,
parties, schedules, and rythm of life. And for a citizenship drom Misiones like
me, it was so crazy how peoples from there survive without drinking mate!
Mate (To see what mate is, look at the link behind
the post) is a typically drink from Argentina. To summarize, it`s a
hot drink that we, the Argentinians, drink in groups trough a straw in
a recipient with some of "Yerba mate." in which you have to put some hot water in the
recipient, and then suck the straw. It taste like green tea and the huge
majority of the people in Argentina likes it. It is very uncommon to see an
Argentinian who doesn`t like the mate, or terere. (Is the same drink than the
mate, but it have to drink cold).
But what is common in Argentina, it isn´t in
Austin. In this place, you can find many kinds of people. It goes from a
Chilean whose Argentinians partners in his work taught him to drink mate, a
Venezuelan woman who learnt to drink mate with her mother in law, and a Chinese
who taste for the first time the yerba mate, and he added to drinking with the Argentinians group.
However, not all is rosy. Despite of the fact that
there were very good impression to the people who lives in Austin, the mate is
not accepted by all the people there. Some people doesn`t like taste it for not
sharing straw, others don`t like it because it is litter, but is an interesting
phenomenon to see the reaction of the people, especially in Austin because it
has a lot of immigrants, and students from other countries.
As same as the mate has problem to introduce in the
countries culture, lot of foreigners have the same problem with the food and
some difficulties with the people. I strongly believe that here in Austin they
don`t put pepper in the water because there is a special law that forbids doing
that! Furthermore, the food from one country to other differs a lot. Imagine
how much you will miss your food from the country that you are, if you move
from another one.
Another topic to see in clashes cultures is: How will be your feelings when
you don`t know how to greet to other people? Kisses and hugges are common in Argentina,
but are very uncommon for the North American people, and for other cultures
that it has too. Some, they just shake a hand, and are very strict with the
personal space. So, it takes a bit of time to learn how to greet to all the people.
As you can see, the cultures clashes all the time,
but fortunately there are lot of people here that has the sames problems as a
foreigner student has. So, be calm, and keep Austin friendly!
The End
Yerba Mate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate
