From Minnesota to Kuwait and Back Again, A Cultural Journey Paper

Somewhere in Atlanta, a little girl reaches out to touch her blanket as she says goodnight to her father, who is just waking up in Egypt, enjoying his morning cup of coffee before he leaves for his conference. Somewhere in Mexico, Rita sits by the computer waiting for her niece studying in Canada and her sister living in Kuwait to all connect and chat together about the week’s events in each of their busy lives. Somewhere in Hong Kong, a CEO waits for his weekly conference call with the Chairman of the board in New York. Jimmy Carter said it best when he said “We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic, different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams (Lewis, 2009)”. Within this global world we are now living in, we have emerged as many different cultures, of which we all must learn to understand enough to communicate inter-culturally. Through this journal, I intend to analyze the journey I embarked on to understand the culture I came from, the adaption to culture I am living abroad in, and the influence the experiences have had on each journey I make back home.

I was raised in a blue color, Caucasian family where work was mandatory to survive and material items always came at high cost. I never really understood why my very Scandinavian family, carrying just a splash of Native American blood, drilled the importance of education, knowing the value of your friends, comprehending the value of a dollar and understanding just how far the friend would help you earn that dollar, into my head. I knew where my grandparents came from, but we really didn’t have any traditions in the family. I never took time to understand any other culture and in fact only cared enough to barely break the surface level of my own background. Who would have thought 15 years later I would be attending my final year of college in a virtual classroom while residing in Kuwait. It was a difficult road I traveled from ignorance to deep cultural understanding of both the culture I was raised in and the culture I have submersed by life in today.

To be able to communicate effectively with the land I now call home, it was important to understand what was culturally acceptable for females. I had to judge when it was or was not appropriate for me to communicate with the opposite gender. I also had to learn how to effectively communicate basic needs, as language was a barrier for me. I now understand that this was an important step in mastering intercultural communication flexibility. As the “goal of intercultural communication is to create shared meanings effectively, so that what I intended to say or imply is clearly understood by the culturally different other (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2005)”. Words must always be chosen carefully, but also the way in which we communicate those words is also something to consider.

I have learned along the way that Arabs are not always shouting and women in Kuwait are not always submissive in their speech, this is just the acceptable norm in their speech community. Distinctive features in speech and body language vary in every culture. Countries who speak several dialects of a particular language, as is the case in Kuwait, often share the same group identity. What bothered me most about conversation style amongst natives in Kuwait was the constant code switching between English and Arabic words. Especially the fact that no matter how well a native could speak the language, they still through in the accent when they were code switching. My own children do the same. They speak fluent English, but when around their Kuwaiti friends, they pick up this strong Arab pronunciation of English dialect.

Intercultural communication, in comprehending dialects, accents and speech tone, is a mandatory part of my career abroad. I am an administrator at a bilingual school and have had the rewarding experience of adapting to the working conditions present in our multi-cultural, multilingual atmosphere. Being able to communicate effectively while cultivating an ethical way of thinking into daily activities at work is an important aspect of my job. Since three predominate languages are spoken in my line of work (English, Arabic and French), words must be chosen carefully. Grammatical rules I learned in elementary school don’t usually help me here. All the rules change when you are living a life abroad. One word may be considered polite to one nationality and a sheer insult to another. Along with carefully chosen words, are the actions, as well as consequences for the actions. These must be fully understood by all employees. However, actions people take and react to are often learned from the culture they are raised in.

As children, we learn values, appreciation, rejection, and culture though the influence of our families. It is the family and gender socialization differences which have helped build my own cultural identity. Without the guidance I received from my family, I may never have had the courage to embark on life abroad. However, it is this very same cultural identify that has made my intimate intercultural relationship challenging. Being raised under a very individualist culture (as is the case for most North American’s), and marrying into a very collectivist culture was a challenge that required patience, hard word and commitment from both sides. I have learned through this class that my husband and I were able to make our relationship work because we were both raised to carry our own opinion, and both of us have high interdependent self construals. We can easily adapt to our surroundings and value each other’s differences.

Being immersed in another culture, the Intercultural adjustment almost always begins with culture shock. Since I had socio-emotional goals in relocating overseas, I passed quickly through the stages of culture shock. I stayed in the honeymoon stage for a long period of time, where I learned about the culture. It was the language barrier that brought me to the hostility stage. I could not understand what was being said most of the time. I felt unsure of myself and always thought all the conversations were about me because I could not understand them. This stage passed quickly, as I made an effort to speak and understand the language quickly. I think I have stuck on the humor stage and am just skipped over the ambivalence stages, this is for two reasons. First, I am always laughing about the mistakes I make when speaking to natives in Arabic. I also laugh at the funny things I do when out and about. Like show the opposite gender my appreciation, which in this part of the world always gets taken in the wrong way. I usually end up getting followed around and an attempt to take my phone number is made. Second, I never really go back to the U.S. for a long period of time. Kuwait is my home now. When I leave, it is for a short visit to the U.S., not a return “home”. It’s a happy time, filled with pride and excitement because I get to see my friends and family, share stories with them about my travels and live abroad and deliver gifts.

When I arrive on American soil, the reentry culture shock stage sets in every time. As I have lived the better part of the last ten years in a multi-cultural society where women are conservative and men respectful (for the most part), I am rudely awakened by the reality that the world is not the same all around. My Islamic attire is stared at, and when I speak I get even more comments. Upon my first few re-entries, I felt like everyone around me was shamefully staring, wondering how I could have “turned my back” on the freedom most desire. But then I remember, I left this country to move to a land where others may feel I am repressed, but in all actuality, I am given more opportunities and responsibilities then had I stayed behind in the U.S. Since my visits home are short, I quickly move through the resocialization stage, enjoying my time with friends and family and observing the changes that have occurred in my absence.

Whether I am reentering my home country or the place I now call home, I found this course especially enlightening describing the intercultural discovery path we must all go through is really quite the same, no matter where in the world you travel to. We all need to learn to understand each other in order to communicate effectively. Even when we don‘t speak the language, we communicate culturally to educate one another about the world around us.