The White Massai

Culture shock is one of the most difficult phases that people have to live when they are involved in another culture. As the movie showed, most of the time traveling to a foreign country could be exciting because going abroad means new experiences, new friends and more knowledge. Despite of the benefits we can get from new cultures, we can obtain disappointments.

In the movie, when Carola saw Lemalian, she immediately felt something special for him and she took the risk to share how much she was interested in him so she asked him to dance, even though the music and the way they danced were different, in that moment her life had already changed and everything was interesting. However, Carola’s boyfriend could not understand why she was interested in that culture or why it was important for her to have met Lemalian, so he gave up and went back home.
I think it is understandable not to have the chance to explore somewhat we do not to acculturate if the person thinks that he/she cannot be able to assimilate it. In the movie, Carola fell in love with Lemalian and she left behind everything she had in her country to begin a new life with him. I think there are situations that we cannot avoid like love and that makes us change our lives and adopt another lifestyle where we try to live in harmony like in Carola’s case. According to some psychologists, that phase is called “recovery” because after a long time living in a different place or just sharing and meeting peculiar people, we can feel comfortable.

However, there are several traditions and beliefs that we are not able to understand like the situation that Carola had to face when she realized that “female circumcision” is one of the important traditions that she couldn’t change, even thought it could be terrible for other people.
Another example could be the mistrust that Lemalian felt because of the way that Carola smiled to people when she was talking to them and how she assisted people in the store. That behavior confused Lemalian since he thought that Carola was flirting with them; also he assumed Carola had a lover, as a result, they had lots of problems so their relationship ended.
Finally, I feel we really have to think if we are able to understand or assimilate the new culture or not, so we can make the clear decision of trying to live with that or just leaving it behind.

Culture and Communication

There are a lot of characteristics that identify certain groups or organizations, for example to be part of a group of friends in our neighborhood, in school, high school and university because each group has different ways to share experiences, anecdotes, birthday celebrations or maybe unusual ways to go out and enjoy the free time. For example, in the classroom, when we immediately start the course, we choose our group of friends which have several similarities and we can feel comfortable each other, but many times there are situations that affect certain friendships because of disagreements. Consequently, we as people and citizens have many ways to explore cultures.

One of them, I think, is technology and the media since they have an important role when we talk about culture. Nowadays, there are a lot of ways to meet or share with people like the Internet where we can find many websites to chat with people around the world. For example, in my case that I am studying English, I have met a lot of U.S. citizens and Mexicans and we have kept in touch and shared our experiences by Internet. In addition, I have met Latin American people who have told me a lot of habits about their cultures.

Also, in relationships there are a number of different activities which are done by the couple as sharing with their girl/boyfriend’s family and how they celebrate their anniversary every month or year. Besides, we can share family backgrounds and even some secrets that some of us have. For example, in one of my relationships my boyfriend and I used to see a funny movie or watch TV every raining Sunday during winter, and go to some place where we could play videogames. Also, we had a certain song that reminded us of our relation and different phrases, thus we had our own culture but other couples are maybe used to do different activities.

In my opinion, because that is exactly what cultural “differences” are about; culture sometimes is complex because there are some unusual customs like human mutilations and animal sacrifices that are practiced in many countries to worship their God; however, there are many interesting and sophisticated customs like belly-dance and some ceremonies with colorful clothes and peculiar and wonderful songs around a bonfire. Moreover, culture and each topic it involves depend on denotation and connotation because many times something is seen depending on the way it is shown and not the way that it is understood.

Culture Expectations

Every person in the world has a different background and also physical characteristics, customs, habits, beliefs and a certain lifestyle. Those issues which identify us are called culture. Many times culture is misunderstood because normal behavior in some countries could be considered strange in others; for that reason we should give ourselves the opportunity to know more about other cultures and try to understand them.

There are many ways to approach those cultures and one of them is social media. By using technology we can share how amazing our culture is, appreciate others and know the differences around the world, also we can understand how many differences there are in order to be open-minded and enjoy our differences as well as we can.

I hope this course will help me to understand that even though we have our own culture, we can be able to understand others because speaking another language also involves learning about new lifestyles. Therefore, in this project I expect to show my point of view and also what I have been learning about certain cultures. As a result, I hope everything I write in this blog can facilitate awareness of how interesting culture could be for our lives.