So I misunderstood my boss-lady (she's not exactly my boss... my supervisor. that's better) when she said that we were doing a conference today about inter-cultural topics. I though that we'd be going somewhere and having small discussions and listening to lectures and whatnot. That was not the case.
But I was not disappointed, because instead we went on a day-trip to El Escorial and the palace there with a bunch of the people that use the Casino de Reina resource center. I hung out with my ladies and some boys from Senegal thought I was super interesting, and then the Pakistani and Indian men all wanted pictures with me. Kind of weird. Yikes. But I loved hanging out with my ladies. Like I said, I can understand Spanish so much better these days.
The ladies got on topic of politics and "el crisis," and they started to argue about it, and they mentioned something about how so many people are over-paid while so many people are homeless and all that jazz, and they kind of asked me if Madoff was doing the same thing, and I said he might have been, but I told them about how Michigan is getting hit hard with the crisis because of the auto industry, and that Detroit is almost empty. Then Toni, the lady I was talking to, talked about how she saw on the news that LA and Miami have like super rich streets and neighborhoods but if you walk a few blocks away you find intense poverty. She was surprised to hear that so much of the U.S. is like that. I was surprised to hear how socialist their ideas were. Not that it's bad, but we really wouldn't hear that stuff in the U.S.
Also, an interesting cultural exchange was to explain to them that as an "Americana," I don't have really any culture or traditions, given that everybody was once an immigrant, and my heritage is Polish, Irish, and German. They were surprised to hear that after 4 generations (that I knew, at least) being int he U.S., we hardly have anything passed down to us besides some religious traditions. People kept asking me where my parents were from. "Son de los Estados Unidos." They don't know the states, so it would have been useless to be like "Oh my mom's from Maryland, my dad's from Oklahoma." As far as I can tell, everyone here is either a new immigrant, or can trace their heritage as Spanish back years and years. They were surprised to hear that I really didn't have a "culture," and I guess this is why I love to explore Spain so much and look at their history.
Dear sister --
ReplyDeleteYou do too have a culture. There are all sorts of rituals and meaningful things about the stuff that you do, but you don't see it that way. We may not have a long cultural history of cafes, like they do in the middle east, but we go to starbucks and talk, right? We have traditional-esque in the United States, too -- stuff we think is traditional but not really.
This is a really interesting topic, and I'd love to hear you talk more about it, especially if you think harder about what the American culture consists of.
That's why I put "culture" in quotation marks, because I for sure know that we have an American culture, but I guess I'm thinking of something more indigenous, something passed down through generations, something that has a deeper meaning than our popular-consumer culture that comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteAh... one man's culture is just another man's life... For the benefit of both of my above left leaning daughters, I am using "man" as in dictionary definition of "mankind." What would I consider my culture. A house in the suburbs,a car in every driveway and cheap gas in every tank, and road trips to the lake and camping one or two weekends a month, little league games and ice cream in the summertime. Watching football and baseball on weekends. Yes, I know that is not exactly how you grew up; but, that is how I grew up. You did not grow up that way because, I chose the military lifestyle and moving around so much, it was hard to establish the roots necessary to explore (you can only explore so much on an island). So as a begining the roots of your personal culture are those of a military dependant with relocations every two years on average. It is what made you so friendly, it is what forced you both to apply yourselves. And at it's essence, it is why I put no boundaries on who you were or what you would become. Your cultural keystone is freedom.
ReplyDeleteFor the record..... Pre 1776 Revolutionary War...you are the ninth generation that I can validate...possibly 10th in North America.
ReplyDeleteThat's really cool, Dad. Who was the guy who fought in the revolutionary war?
ReplyDeleteAnd I definitely understand what you mean by saying that since we moved around a lot, we learned very easily how to apply ourselves and be friendly.
I also wanted to make note in this post that since this I've definitely learned more concretely that Spain has a long history of being a place where people were immigrants-from, not immigrants-to. It's a new phenomenon within the last 15 years or so.
Also, I was talking about how socialist their ideas were, well hell, Spain is a socialist democracy. Duh Laura.