Psyched to Go Back

It’s quite sad to see this whole experience ending with me seeing my newfound friends one by one. In some ways, it seems just yesterday when we were all introducing ourselves adamantly to each other. Eagerly we traveled together as strangers and in the process quickly became friends. In some ways it was just yesterday—just four months ago. Was it enough time? I’d rather not think about that—I just have to keep telling myself that it had to end eventually.

I began packing up my things several weeks ago, yet today, the day before I leave, I still have items to stow, drawers that I don’t want to empty, last meals with friends that I wish were just meals. It had to end at some point, but in no way is this the conclusion to this blog, nor this chapter in my life.

Though it seems like we’ve moved beyond this, as Rhinesmith would point out, I’m now at stage seven. But I think that in his little analysis, either he got something slightly wrong or it doesn’t quite apply to exchange students in particular. Stage seven points out return anxiety, and honestly, I don’t think my anxiety levels are at a high right now. Quite the opposite, I’m not eager to return home.

It’s not that I’ve become adverse to home or anything. I love constant weather at livable temperatures as any friend of mine could quickly tell you. I love driving and speaking English as a part of every aspect of every day of my life. No matter where I go and how far I go, I will forever hold California in the very center of my heart, even if there’s nothing left for me to go back to.

I’ve realized that there is more now though to the world I suppose, as corny as it sounds, and I really want to see just how far away the edge of the planet is. I guess I’ve got my future to accomplish this, and accomplish this I will.

I am blessed and I understand that, because I know that while my life is not perfect and never will be, so many doors have been opened up to me. By chance or by higher power, so quickly and so definitely I have found my place in the absence of such a place. I regret ever having thought the world was against me, however long ago that was, and shall never feel that way again.

I am not psyched to go back. As much as I know that the longer I stay away, the more I will end up missing my home seven thousand miles away, I really want to stay here—stay studying here, stay traveling from here, stay experiencing other lives from here. But alas I cannot.

Due to the wisdom of past me, I decided not to file the proper paperwork to pre-approve my extension at the University of Hong Kong all the way to May. I understand why and I assumed that I would have an easier time accepting this preemptive decision on my past counterpart’s part.

Right now I’m not accepting it. Right now I feel like it wasn’t so necessary for me to graduate college in the three-year manner that I am. I know that until I finish my education (as if it’s ever done) I will flip back and forth between whether it was the right decision to plan my graduation so early.

I sit at my desk this last night of mine in Hong Kong at nineteen years of age—not yet two decades old, not yet old enough to ask for a beer on the airplane back to the United States. Who am I to do this at this age? I’m the youngest of the exchange students I know here, by as little as a few months to as much as six years. I understand that my mind is pliable, that I’m not in my own yet, that I may still have an inch in height to grow.

But on the other hand, not to sound old, but I know that my youth is closing up on me. For a good year and a half, I could read in cars without getting sick. I could stay on boats for hours on end and not feel the least bit nauseous. As silly as it sounds, I know times are changing. I know that my glasses are getting thicker, unevenly on different axes; I know that reading—even a bit—on a moving vehicle will get my head rolling for hours; I know that as much as I try, as hard as I try, certain things just aren’t so easy to learn anymore. And as much as I know not to let the future take all the brownies, I know that there’s only so much I can do—mind over matter only works to a certain extent.

This last night in Hong Kong is adding up to be a sentimental one. The number of friends still here I need not one hand to count. The number of hours until my plane leaves Hong Kong as I write this sentence stands at thirteen.

I finally got to taking the Star Ferry Night Harbour Tour and it was amazing. They circled Hong Kong as I took two hundred pictures with my new Nikon D90 camera. I got a good night as it wasn’t too hazy, and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing this skyline for quite some time.

As much as I know I'm coming back one day, someday, I also know that it’s going to be far in the future—I might have a different passport; I might have multiple passports.

But for now I’m moving back to the University of California, San Diego. Good old UCSD in the bubble that is La Jolla, California. I’ve already got my accommodation sorted and I know I’m moving in the day before classes start. I’ve already begun buying books for classes and filed plenty of paperwork to re-matriculate.

I’m set to continue with my life. I’ve laid my provisions out as I have since the end of middle school. I’ve kept watch on my own deadlines and made sure I’ve never been late on anything since I was twelve. The time to move on is now, and though the road has been paved for me by me, I know that not only am I going to be apprehensive getting on that asphalt for the first time in a long time, but also I’m not so sure I’m going to be emotionally ready for it. But as they say (though not usually in this context), life moves on.

To Extend or Not To Extend

That is the question, isn’t it?

It’s something that I knew that I would have to decide sooner and later, and I have to say that though I have come to it, I can’t help thinking the decision was made before me.

I applied to study here for one semester in substitution for one quarter back home. I chose not to file the departmental preapproval form for extension, in hopes that that would force myself to come back home for the latter two quarters of the year.

The reason for doing this was that because this university runs on two semesters per year and UCSD runs on three quarters per year, my substitution of two semesters for three quarters would delay my graduation substantially, making me miss several required classes that are only offered once a year.

So I found out after I was accepted that I can actually petition to bypass that preapproval to allow me to study here for a full year. I realize that to graduate on time though, I can’t.

Though when I arrived, I practically began counting down the days to when I leave, I’m growing to love Hong Kong. Though I still look forward to going home, I still want to make sure that these next ten weeks (yeah, I only have ten weeks left here) are the best.

In Rhinesmith’s Ten Stages of Adjustment, I’m most definitely at the sixth stage, where I’ve fully accepted my host culture. After this last trip to Beijing, I realized that my Mandarin isn’t half bad, and I’m ready to put my Cantonese learning into a higher gear.

In some ways, it is a race to the finish line, with me trying to get my travels in, learn languages, and get good grades at the same time. Right now, I’d rather be the turtle though rather than the hare, and unfortunately I presently feel like the latter.

Ready, set, go.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.

A World English

Last year, I was in a social anthropology class called Language, Identity, and Community at UCSD. Taught by an academic (whose name I have chosen to omit), who has done plenty of research regarding the use of Spanish and Catalan in the Catalonia (an autonomous region of Spain), the class aimed to give us an understanding about the role language plays in creating and enforcing identities among individuals and communities among groups of individuals. Though that was a very interesting class (albeit I got my lowest college grade in that class), that’s not what this is about.

The professor shared with us a story that I feel can be related with by one of my friends here. This professor was from the western side of New York State. Unlike a “standard” American accent, which many purport to be like that of Chicago newscasters, she had a regionalized Midwest accent that many people unfortunately could not understand.

And it’s really not that uncommon. Though I would be quick to point out several differences between a more standard Midwest accent and a Californian accent, in many ways characteristics of the two have converged with spoken media (such as Hollywood productions) becoming widespread, and as such, neutral. The logic of which is as follows: there is no one natural way of speaking. As such, everyone has an accent in the language(s) that he or she speaks, though some may be seen as more neutral than others due to exposure and proliferation.

This means that accents that aren’t heard on widespread media are generally understood less. So a regionalized accent such as Cajun, Scottish, or Southern, is often stigmatized as not being the norm. With such speakers’ non-standard pronunciation (and often grammatical forms as well as lexicon), they tend to stand apart from the crowd.

Such problems are made worse as students learning English as a second language are taught British Received Pronunciation or Standard American English. When learning a second language, students are taught what is wrong and what is right, and sometimes things are just different.

This story that she shared took place in Spain, with an audience from all around the world. It consisted of a guest lecture taking place in English by a German scholar. At the end of this scholar’s lecture, she asked a question, which received an answer. Afterwards, she heard people trying to figure out in hushed tones who “that woman who asked the question” was, because they could not understand her. These people were speakers of English as a second language, and in her experience she realized that being a native speaker of English did not automatically give her the ability to be understood in English-language settings. On top of that, she found that those people who spoke English as a second language felt they spoke better than her because they could not understand her regional accent.

Like I said, HKU is an English-language institution, which makes it arguably more attractive to a wider range of students over a different Chinese university where they would teach classes in Mandarin. As such, and possibly to my disadvantage, I rarely have to speak any form of Chinese here as most of the exchange students appear to converse to each other in English.

But this isn’t to talk about Cantonese again. Improperly so, this is to talk about English. I heart English, and as a student of linguistics, I’ve made a point of noticing all the different varieties I’ve heard.

To start, there are the people who’ve learned English as a second language. In that range, I’ve met and heard people from the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Norway.

Native English varieties I’ve heard are Scottish, British, Australian, Canadian, Californian, and Midwestern American. Some that I’ve mentioned I cannot be more specific about because I do not have enough experience with such varieties to the point where I could narrow it down further.

In particular, my friend from Scotland finds herself having trouble being understood the most. Except on the phone, I have little trouble understanding her. Though she is a native English speaker, the lack of understanding of her variety really shows how English is a world language of sorts.

So what have I seen?

Well, English speakers overall use most of the same words, so we can understand almost all of what we’re saying if we speak clearly. There are several words that I’ve not heard of and many more that have different meanings. The majority of the differences are in drastically different sounds.

So how do we cope?

Well we explain things to each other of course. We often make fun of each other though for the particular words that we use. It’s all in good fun. Part of learning about other people is being accepting and understanding.

I don’t have an accent, right?

Well no one thinks they really have an accent, because everyone feels like they speak naturally. So how has my speech changed since coming here?

Well for one, I’ve never really used California slang. I’d be hard-pressed to say there’s ever been a point in my life when I’ve used “dude” excessively, in say every sentence. Beach Boys-slang I’ve never used. Terms like “wipeout” never made it to me, though I know where all the places in their songs are. The thing I used the most that regionalized me is “like.”

Like though I’ve like learned how to, well, like monitor my use of “like” so if I like don’t want to say “like” so much, I like can.

So here I don’t use “like” very much at all. I’ve heard more “hella” here than I’d like from people from Northern California, and have come to terms with it here. Luckily I haven’t incorporated that particular term into my lexicon yet.

The biggest change in my speech is my intonation of questions. Whereas as home I would ask something like “Have you eaten yet?” Like , I find myself making questions sound more like . Whether or not you get what I mean by this, I’m sure I’ll still sound like this for a while after I get back home.

Speaking of returning, I just got back from my reading week trip to Beijing. Stay tuned for all the juicy details and awesome pictures!

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.

The Ugly World

So I’ve been talking about the prototypical stereotypical “Ugly American” over several posts prior. Loud and obnoxious, drinking to no end, the “Ugly American” was what we were told not to be. We were told that the rest of the world frowns on such seemingly senseless actions, but after what happened last night, not only do I have doubts about how inclusive the “Ugly American” is of Americans and exclusive of everyone else, but also I feel I sense a common humanity among the people of the world.

Last night was something of an unofficial gathering of the HKU international exchange students. We were to meet at HKU’s west gate and then venture over to the party area of Central by bus. People from the Sasoon Road Campus, myself included, met earlier and then trucked over to west gate together. There we found a small crowd of international students.

And that was my intention in going to this get together. As previously explained, I’m not a huge fan of drinking. I still have never been drunk, never hungover, and the most I’ve drunk at one time was one-and-a-half limoncellos in Sorrento, Italy. In short, I made no effort to disguise the fact that I was there primarily to meet-and-greet other exchange students.

I met a lot of people from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Europe mostly. It was a diverse group. I thought the gathering would be very casual—you know, maybe a drink or two—nothing big and explosive.

I’m not against drinking personally, despite what my actions seem to suggest. I always thought that I was more of a glass-of-wine-with-dinner kind of guy over a let’s-go-drink-the-night-away one. I don’t drink also because in the United States the appropriate age is 21, whereas most everywhere else it hovers around 18, as most people know.

And the little get-together was going great. The crowd began growing and before we knew it, we probably numbered in the low hundreds. I met more people than I could ever possibly remember (a sentiment shared by many of those students), and before I knew it we were being herded onto a double-decker bus.

Now trying to get some hundred people onto a single bus at a single bus stop is kind of a nightmare. First, we were on a two-lane road with blind curves, so we stopped all traffic behind the bus as we filed our way onto it. To make matters worse, most of us, having just arrived from our home countries used coins to pay the fare. Locals prefer to use so-called Octopus cards, which work like rechargeable, good-as-cash gift cards all around Hong Kong, that are way more convenient for purchasing as well as public transportation. Unfortunately, taxis only take cash, but that’s beside the point.

When all of us managed to get on the bus, over twenty of us didn’t have seats. Standing in the aisle, most of us used this highly claustrophobic time to acquaint ourselves with more people with varying levels of success.

We got off in Lai Kwai Fong in Central, which pretty much serves as Hong Kong’s party district, and the drinking began. Some people easily spent hundreds of Hong Kong dollars on drinks (as the prices at the bars were absolutely ridiculous). Most of us went onto this small pedestrian side street where there was a 7-Eleven, which was much, much cheaper than the bars, of course. Whereas the bars had loud music, the pedestrian street had lower volumes of it, allowing us to keep introducing ourselves and such.

I only had one beer the whole night, but as the night went on and the drinking began showing its effects, it became less a night about meeting other people and more about having drunken fun, I guess. And while the Americans drank to the effect of the “Ugly American” stereotype, others of different nationalities drank to that same effect. The taxis for hire were patrolling the streets for business as the partying went on and on and on.

While they remained in a drunken stupor, I became bored, being completely sober and all. Ugly American? I couldn’t help thinking that that classification is more deserving of the title “Ugly World.” As the night went on, I split a taxi back to my hall with two other people. I pronounced Sasoon more properly, with rounded lips and a French “u” for the “oo” of Sasoon and we found our way back easily.

The night was over and I was ready to go to sleep. And for the record, I still don’t see the point.

Loss of Life, Limb, or Language

A major component of most study abroad experiences is the foreign language aspect. On one hand, the prospect of going to a place where no one speaks your language can be daunting. On the other hand, going overseas has the potential to provide the practice necessary for foreign-language learners as studying in that language (as opposed to just studying the language) improves the depth of practice, necessitating increased fluency on a higher register than mere conversational speech.

In my opinion, a major problem with American students is the lack of motivation to learn other languages, and according to the British Broadcasting Company, many British students feel similarly toward the discipline. (“A Point of View” by Lisa Jardine, May 9, 2006) Yeah, it makes rational sense. English is spoken by much of the world population, and some estimates put it in front of Mandarin as the most spoken language when counting second-language learners in addition to native speakers. A boatload of people spread over a good chunk of the world speak English, which is what I speak, so why should I learn a separate language? Before I entered high school, this was my opinion, so I guess I was not so different.

When I was little, I detested the idea of having to learn another language, and now I’m not so sure that I understood the concept of different languages and multilingualism back then. For me, English just seemed the natural way of communication because I came out my mouth so easily and so easily for those speaking to me as well. Other languages may have seemed just weird sound to me, odd and bizarre, containing sounds that I did not believe I could pronounce myself. Now I know better.

Chinese school was a burden, a waste of Saturday mornings. The program (teaching Mandarin) was largely ill structured and the teachers bored me dearly. Chinese confused me by notion of tones and quantifiers, and having left the program early, I came out confused about Chinese and thought the process of second language acquisition was boring and pointless.

In third grade, I picked up an American Sign Language book that I could not and did not put down for months. I learned to sign the English alphabet (which I still know) and independently learned some words. My teacher thought I had a knack for it and told my mother.

Today, learning languages is something of an addiction. I took Spanish 1 freshman year of high school and found acquiring it so easy that I studied to skip Spanish 2. I passed the final for Spanish 2 with flying colors, with the Foreign Language Department chair touting my abilities to inflect reflexive verbs with little direct experience. The following year I entered Spanish 3 and blew my teacher’s socks off with my near-native accent (I chose Colombian) that convinced some of my friends that I was half-Mexican.

The following year I continued in Spanish, as well as picking up college-level French and college-level Japanese, which I found fascinating, but the pace a little lackluster. My senior year of high school, I continued my French studies and maintained my Spanish competence, also picking up Latin and trying again at Mandarin in Chinese 2, after skipping Chinese 1 by studying (for the same reasons as why I skipped Spanish 2). That year, I also decided to start picking up Italian, and now I continue my efforts to become as fluent as possible in all aforementioned languages.

Many people, including my mother, believe I have a natural propensity for learning languages, which, while not necessarily untrue, is not the entire basis for my success. I’d rather think it was because of my effort and passion for language learning.

As I plan to discuss in a later post, my love of language, and consequently culture, has brought me to where I am today. With my Linguistics major, I get to study the principles of language and the role that it plays in society (my concentration in Language and Society). My interest in culture has brought me to find interest in international relations, a subset of political science, which brings me to my other major. While there is an International Relations major offered by the Political Science Department, I chose to study political science through the International Studies department because the interdisciplinary nature of the program allowed me to choose a secondary track that improved upon the breadth of my discipline.

Now, I believe that everybody should learn a second language because it is hypothesized that the nature of a particular language allows us to develop different ways of analyzing a situation that a rigid, monolingual mind would theoretically otherwise find incomprehensible. A basic and well-known example of this, though not analyzed as such, is the fact that when expressing age, English speakers are the age, whereas some other language speakers possess the age. “I am 18 years old” in English would be expressed as “J’ai 18 ans” in French or “Tengo 18 años” in Spanish—both of which literally mean “I have 18 years.” In short, my French professor Marie Agel at Moorpark Community College said, “Learning another language just makes us smarter and people who know more than one language are just smarter.”

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my knowledge of Cantonese and Mandarin is minimal at best. I know that I need to concentrate on my learning Cantonese because it’s the primary language of communication there. Whereas what little Mandarin I know was acquired formally, the way I acquired Cantonese is a different story.

Whereas Mandarin can be written down word for word, Cantonese does not have the formal ability to be formally written down exactly as uttered, with the exception of some common informalities, or Written Colloquial Cantonese, which is a recent advent. This confused me a lot. As an example of this, a phrase like “Why am I your friend?” would be uttered like “dinggai ngo hai neige pengyao” in spoken Cantonese, with proper tones of course, and written as “为什么我是你底朋友?” Now with Chinese having monosyllabic orthography, the discrepancy is clear that you just used nine characters to write down eight syllables. It’s like writing down in Latin what you say in Spanish. As such, when a Cantonese speaker would read that sentence, it would come out as “waiswomwo ngo si nei ge pengyao” with nine syllables and appropriate tones. As such, this means that there are effectively two kinds of Cantonese (and many other Chinese dialect-languages as well)—one for spoken speech and one for reading, which, as I understand, is basically Mandarin with Cantonese phonology.

This created a problem for me because a big key to learning language for me personally is the ability to write it down and study it independently. This is not the natural way of learning language, as evidenced by the facts that most languages are unwritten, and that children learn to speak before they learn (and most often must be taught) to write. This is compounded by the fact that the only person who I really learn Cantonese from is my mother. Both of our primary languages are English, so it’s difficult, at least for me, to not take the easy way out and just reply to her in English, which I inevitably end up doing to her dismay. In addition, my mother left Hong Kong when she was 11, and since Cantonese is a modern language, with the definition of a modern language being one that is changing as it is currently in use, the language changed without her, and as a result the Cantonese that I learn from her has a retro twist. Isn’t that groovy?

On the surface, this should not be a problem, because HKU, which I will be attending, officially teaches in English, as do most universities and colleges in Hong Kong, but after watching a documentary about codeswitching among university students and other Hong Kongers, I wonder how far English has permeated into daily life, and whether it is gaining or losing ground and how I will be treated if I try to hold on to my language in the face of another.

The documentary is titled Multilingual Hong Kong Present 一个 Project, and it is, in essence, a case study of several of my anthropology and linguistics classes. In INTL 101 Languages in Competition (for which I actually wrote a 4,700-word paper about the bilingual/trilingual government of Hong Kong), we focused a great deal on codeswitching, which is basically shifting between languages in certain situations among bilinguals. In LIGN 101 Introduction to Linguistics, we spent a little bit of time on bilingualism/multilingualism and phonotactic constraints. In ANSC 122 Language and Society and ANSC 162 Language, Identity, and Community, we focused on codeswitching as a sociological force in creating personal and community identity.

The main feature of the documentary was the simple-yet-revealing sentence, “Today, I must present a project.” As a foray into the linguistic nature of Hong Kong, not a single subject on camera was able to say the complete sentence in Cantonese. The problem lied in the word “project,” for which many Hong Kongers could not find a Cantonese equivalent. When it was brought to their attention (for many fluent bilinguals do not realize that they codeswitch) they tried again, pausing before “project,” but inevitably finding that the most effective word in their vocabularies to express that which is a “project” was the English word “project.”

Certain English phrases were simply imbedded in Hong Kong Cantonese speech, and there was little that could be done to undo it. Not to say that codeswitching is a bad thing, but many “purists” believe that we must be pure of (a single) language in our speech and use one language or another and not switch mid-situation, or (oh my!) mid-sentence. People who have not consciously investigated and studied this phenomenon, including those who do it, often have this opinion.

Unfortunately for this school of thought, history is not on their side. English in its purist form is a prototypical mutt of a language. It is estimated that Modern English (existing sometime before Shakespeare on) consists of a full two thirds Latin largely via French, which is more than its namesake in Middle English (with an estimated less than one thirds contributing in some way to Modern English), itself with Germanic heritage. As a result of this heritage, in English we have many pairs of words that mean exactly the same thing, just with different connotations. Oversee and supervise, build and construct, deadly and fatal, eat and dine, forbid and prohibit, and mistake and error are just a few pairs. In general, the Latin-based words are more formal than their Germanic-based counterparts.

To compound this hybridity, there are borrowings from many other languages. Algebra comes from Arabic, yacht from Dutch, bungalow from Hindi, and brainwash from a direct translation of Chinese, to name a few.  These words are so integrated that no speaker thinks about keeping English a pure language when speaking it. In addition, historical attempts by scholars to purify English by bringing it back to its Germanic roots proved ineffective.

In short, codeswitching and the borrowing of words is not a problem—rather it enhances the expressiveness of the speakers, serving as an innovative force. As with everything human, such phenomena have much deeper meaning than just the phenomena themselves (ergo anthropology!). Therein lies my issue. I know it seems like these past four posts, I haven’t been doing anything but whining, and I’m sorry. If you want to reconsider Rhinesmith, I’m still in the first stage, so bear with me, for I have knowledge to drop!

As we have examined in INTL 101 Languages in Competition and again in depth in ANSC 162 Language, Identity, and Community, codeswitching serves as an identity-creating force, and the choice of language, often a subconscious decision, is used effectively to this point.

I understand that a large part of the study abroad experience is the foreign language aspect—don’t get me wrong, I do. But with Hong Kong’s history as a British Crown Colony and the fact that more than a third of the population has receptive competence of English, I would be lying to you and myself if I were to say that I am not going to take advantage of this. I’ll try not to, but I hardly think I’ll be able not to, at least in the first couple weeks if not the entire first month or more.

I have to admit that as a native English speaker, I thought I would be revered in a city full of aspiring English speakers who feel that their main connection to the world is through English. While I know that English is respected, people codeswitching with too much English in Hong Kong are often thought of arrogant as demonstrated in the documentary, and it’s not clear whether this applies equally to foreigners and locals. Being a foreigner, I would like to think that I will receive some acceptance in speaking English from the locals, but I also know that my heritage gives me the ability to look like a local, so I might not receive the same cushion that a white American might receive, per se.

This documentary, having used many university students as subjects of interviews, has brought about language as an object of contention in my mind. Most of the subjects of conversation were spoken in Cantonese, with an English word inserted here or there, which disrupts the preconception that I had that since the classes are in English, it would make sense that the students would speak English regularly as well. Since this documentary has brought to light the fact that this may very well not be true, I wonder if codeswitching goes on in class, because it seems that it is difficult to stick to one language or the other in Hong Kong.

All I can say is I can try to acquire Cantonese and use it to my advantage for “social profit.” Until then, I hope I can be given the benefit of the doubt in the intentions of my actions like an unseasoned beginner. I’ll be sure to practice ahead of time and see what comes of it.

*

The Gist of It: General Orientation

The UCSD Programs Abroad Office held their mandatory general study abroad orientation for summer and fall departures this last Wednesday, and to my surprise it was more about cultural adjustment and health issues than anything else. As expected, the country-specific orientation focuses on our specific programs and the logistics of the whole thing. Hong Kong’s is set for May 16. Two things from this first orientation in particular that really stuck out were the “cultural iceberg” and Rhinesmith’s Ten Stages of Adjustment, both illustrated in the packets distributed at the meeting. Though out of the discussion I don’t believe I learned anything particularly new, the fact that it brought much possible elation about the whole experience back down to earth was probably necessary.

The cultural iceberg is a succinct representation of how we think about other countries and other cultures. The idea is that just as you can only see the top tenth of an iceberg, with the lower nine-tenths indiscernible from above water (Titanic, anyone?), most people only see the superficial aspects of culture and do not realize the other nine-tenths of a culture until later (maybe not until it’s too late?). To anyone that knows about and or feels a sense of belonging to more than one culture, this idea, possibly in a different metaphor, likely exists at a profound level. So above water is what we all see—in a word, pop culture: river dancing for Ireland, videogames and high technology for Japan, Shakespeare for England, ABBA for Sweden (thanks, Dad!), etcetera. It’s what our main interests are in as foreigners, as observers. The lower nine-tenths of the iceberg is comprised of things like “notions of modesty,” “ideals governing child raising,” “conception of status mobility,” “roles in relation to status by age, sex, class, occupation, kinship, etc.,” and many, many more. This lower nine-tenths of the iceberg is where we find fundamental differences in with our own culture, where we can easily explain a difference in culture through morality and ethics though the reality is much more complicated than that.

Despite this, in the classes I’ve taken, and not from orientation, I have learned that a big problem with studying “them” or “other” cultures exists in the notion that we consider ourselves to be normal, or relatively normal to others. An example of this is the common utterance “I don’t have an accent,” which is so common among people with many different accents that anyone who’s thought about it has to wonder, so who doesn’t have an accent? The only logical conclusion is that everyone has an accent, because linguistically speaking, no language, dialect, or accent is more neutral than another by human physiology. Therein lies the problem. In putting distance between us and them, we fail to see the similarities between people, instead emphasizing the differences. As cliché as it sounds, we are all more alike than we are different. And in the end we all share 99.9% of the same DNA, with scientific research showing that there is more genetic variation within (the artificially constructed) races than between them.

Therefore, while it was important that this iceberg theory brought our expectations regarding our cultural change to light, it is equally important that we not make a big fuss about all of this and simply open up to the host culture with an open and clear mind.

The second thing that stuck out to me was Rhinesmith’s Ten Stages of Adjustment. Though the concept is legitimate and well accepted, the illustration is accurate but comical, making us students studying abroad look bipolar.



It looks like radio frequency, with it constant ups and downs. As an emotional representation, the lows are emotional lows and the highs are emotional highs, representing different milestones in our study abroad (and subsequent reintegration into American society.

The points are as follows:
1. initial anxiety
2. initial elation
3. initial culture shock
4. superficial adjustment to host culture
5. depression-frustration with host culture
6. acceptance of host culture
7. return anxiety
8. return elation
9. re-entry
10. reintegration

So right now, I’m probably at number 1. Assuming this model is true, 1 is actually the only feasible stage I can be at, because I haven’t arrived yet. I’ll undoubtedly be in that stage through my 14-hour plane ride, and even in exiting their relatively really new airport.

Some colleges offering reorientation programs to students returning from study abroad
By Jean Cowden Moore, Ventura County Star, Monday, March 9, 2009

My father sent me a link to this article shortly after I found out that I had gotten into the University of Hong Kong program. It outlines stages 7-10 of the model and shows how some universities, such as California Lutheran University in my hometown, Thousand Oaks, California, offer and sometimes require reorientation programs to ease the transition back into American life. Outlined in the article are some details of why many students have trouble upon return, include seeing life in the United States as being wasteful and or fondness for their host culture abroad. In addition, any excitement held by the returnee, as pointed out in orientation, can be exploded onto one’s family and friends, causing them to lose interest in the experience, bottling up any nostalgic feelings with others’ annoyance at perseverance of the topic.

UCSD neither requires nor offers a reorientation program, but instead encourages students coming back to attend returnee group meetings, where students get to share their experiences with one another. Besides, everyone I’ve met has told me that studying abroad is supposed to be a positive experience, so these “support groups” after the fact wouldn’t be bad to take advantage of.

Just some thoughts…and thanks for reading.

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