After having the privilege of studying abroad twice, I’ve come to understand that intercultural learning is a cyclical process. What I learned in Cuba allowed me to better articulate my experience there, but studying a different language and living in a different culture in Taiwan meant that I was frustrated at times by my lack of knowledge in my new environment. Although I was leaving my home country to study at a foreign university once more, I encountered new challenges where my past experiences did not always translate. I’m fluent in Spanish, so it was much easier for me to communicate with my Cuban peers and host family than with their counterparts in Tainan. Likewise, my beginning language proficiency in Mandarin made navigating cultural differences more challenging. I also perceived Cuba to be more culturally similar to the United States. Cubans seemed proud of their gregarious reputation, and would often reference it with a laugh in conversation. In this way, our societies seemed similar; in the United States extroverted people tend to be favored as well. After the island gained independence from Spain, America became a strong influence over the island through political manipulation through measures such as the Platt Amendment, but also by way of cultural exchange.
For instance, Cubans use the word ‘garaje’ to refer to their garages, which demonstrates the impact that the English-speaking United States had on their language. In Taiwan, there are cultural values of being more reserved and thoughtful, with the practice of ‘reading the air’ and being considerate of others’ thoughts being popularized by Japanese influence. While my host family in Cuba encouraged my housemate and I to stay out late dancing with our friends, my host family in Taiwan had a curfew. While my host mother in Cuba tended to stay up late anyway watching telenovelas, and had no qualms about going to sleep if I was not back before she felt tired, my family in Taiwan would wait for me if I was late getting home. Not all of these differences were cultural; my Cuban host mom was retired while my Taiwanese host family were both working with children on the younger side. However, because my host family in Taiwan was more reserved and my Mandarin was much more elementary than my Spanish, I experienced more culture shock and anxiety than I had in Cuba. It was definitely a challenge to keep up with my intensive Critical Language Scholarship course schedule while also trying to be a good host son despite my awkwardness.
Even though my host parents encouraged me to take time to rest and also seemed on the introverted side themselves, I felt guilty when I spent time alone because I was not connecting with them as deeply as I had with my family in Cuba. It was very difficult for me to understand their accents and their vocabulary, and I would often compare myself to my peers who had more experience studying Chinese. I wanted my classmates to think that I was keeping up with everything just fine, and so I didn’t communicate my discouragement at first. Because of our language pledge dictating that we speak only Mandarin with each other, I felt isolated. However, once my friends and I talked about the difficulties around the language pledge at one of our resident director meetings, I felt renewed rather than disparaged. It turned out that other people were struggling too, and even though their challenges were different than mine, I felt less alone. My classmates became a really strong support for me and for each other. I had expected that hearing about their experiences would make me feel more alienated, because I had convinced myself that they had figured it all out. However, our conversations only caused me to feel more confident in myself and my own journey. I’ve come to understand that language learning is a personal process and everyone has to move through it on their own journey in a competition with only themselves. As a result, I started to examine my experiences to understand which opportunities were most enriching for me at that point in my language-learning journey, so that I could focus my energy on getting the most out of them. My relationships with my cohort strengthened me throughout the rest of the program, and I found that it was by collaborating with rather than comparing myself to my peers that caused my proficiency to grow.
