Week 6 - Intercultural interactions - Sarah Arriola

Intercultural interactions can go smoothly, or they can be very awkward. To make an intercultural interaction go as smoothly as possible, people should be aware that the person they are interacting with may look the same and speak the same language as they do, but they may come from a completely different culture. Little things, like a handshake or eye contact, can make someone from a different culture very uncomfortable, and may even offend them. What people must always be aware of is that, "During intercultural interactions, individuals can feel lonely, alienated, and isolated; which may result in feelings of homesickness or stress or in daily life, a longing for the way things used to be" (Vaughn p. 101). Being aware of this can help an intercultural interaction go better on both sides, and hopefully can help lessen some of those feelings of loneliness and homesickness.

At a UC football game!!

When I first went to college, although I was in the same state and only about an hour away from home, it still felt like a completely different culture. My high school only had about four hundred people in it, whereas the University of Cincinnati has about forty thousand. I went from having my own room to having to share one with another person. I had been in class with maybe twenty five people at most when in high school, and suddenly I had classes with over one hundred people in them. I went to football games in high school, but they weren't a big deal (we weren't very good), but coming here, football games were extremely exciting and definitely a big deal. Those are only some of the many differences that I encountered in my first few months as a Bearcat. Thankfully I met other people who were going through the same thing I was, or had gone through it a year or two before me, and talking to them made my transition from high school to college much smoother. I can imagine that if someone was moving to a whole new country or culture, it would also help to them to interact with others who had at some point in their lives had been through a similar experience. I think that's one of the reasons AMIS is such a good school. It gives newly immigrated students other people their own age to talk to about their moves, as well as gives them people who can help them understand their new culture.

My sister Amber and I playing "crazy golf."

My older sister was born in the United States but has lived in Britain for most of her life. I met her for the first time in 2005 when she came to the U.S. to visit my family. Although she spoke English, it was obvious that she came from a different culture. I was only fourteen at the time, but I still remember some of the little differences that I noticed while my sister was here. One example is that we went putt-putting, but she referred to it as crazy golf. Another example is that my mom let her drive while she was here, but we all gave her a hard time because we were "afraid" that she was going to drive on the wrong side of the road. A final example that at the time I found quite funny was that she always referred to the trunk of the car as the boot. These are all little things that probably don't seem to have much importance. However, they all allowed me to see that even though she is my sister and we spoke (basically) the same language, we both come from fairly different cultures.

"Cultural competence is the ability to apply knowledge of your own and others' cultures" (Vaughn p. 105). I don't think I am as culturally as competent as I should be. I do not know enough about most other cultures to really be able to apply knowledge of them to an intercultural interaction. I can say, however, that I have become much more culturally competent since coming to UC two years ago and I plan on becoming even more culturally competent in my next two years here, because I do believe that it is important to know more than just what food a culture eats or what holidays they might celebrate. It's important to be able to go deeper and make someone feel as though you care about who they are and where they come from.