Andrea Ruiz Rabadan
Word count: 2,035
A new experience
My study away experience is involving studying in the United States at
Ashland University. I got recruited by the tennis team varsity coach in order to play
for the school at a college Division II level. My purpose is to complete my college
degree, get the GPS experience, improve my English level, and possibly get a job in
the United States.
This experience has been very rewarding to me because I have been learning
to adjust to some cultural aspects since I moved here, I have been improving my
English, and interactions with people from a different culture has taught me a lot
about different ways of thinking. From the first day my plane landed in the United
States I had to make many adjustments to my behavior in order to fit the “American”
culture. Although I had been here before vacationing with my family, it is a whole
new different experience to live in such a different country. One of the first biggest
cultural adjustments I had to make was the way of greeting in the United States.
People in Mexico are used to greet with a kiss and a hug to meet even strangers and
with much more affection to family members. It was a great culture shock to see that
citizens in the United States are used to shake hands when they meet for the first
time and they are used to simply hugs to greet people they already know. It was hard
to adjust to just shake hands and to control the impulse of kissing people who I
already knew when I greeted them. Also, some phrases that people in Ashland use to
greet seemed very strange to me since I hadn’t practiced the English language as
much before. Phrases as: “what’s up” used to make me feel very uncomfortable since
I didn’t know the literal meaning of those phrases. After three years of living in
Ashland, I have adjusted to how people greet verbally and physically, I have learned
slang used in this culture and successfully adjusted to the way of greeting.
Another cultural adjustment I needed to make was to get used to a really
small city and the way of life people are used to in Ashland. I am from Mexico City so
it has been very hard to adjust to such a small city like Ashland. Population just in
Mexico City in of 22 million people so I am used to see different faces and different
people everyday while in Ashland there is a much smaller population, so I have
learned to get more personal with the people I meet since it is more likely that I will
see them again soon. In addition, transportation in very big cities like Mexico is very
easy to get, we can usually use the metro or buses and there are many stations all
over the city while in Ashland you must own a car in order to get transportation. My
freshman year it was a great culture shock to find out there was no public
transportation, not even cabs so I had to walk at least a mile to get cash in my
designated ATM and to get some groceries. Walking during my first semester in
Ashland was the main way I got transportation. Later, in the second semester of my
freshman year I realized that in order to adjust I needed to get a car and, therefore, I
needed a license. Another culture shock involving transportation was learning all the
traffic signals and laws in the state of Ohio since in Mexico the only real rules while
driving are stop lights and respecting lanes. I failed two times the driver’s exam so I
