Russian Style

Jessica Peck is a sophomore majoring in Communication Sciences & Disorders. She traveling in Moscow, Russia for the next 10 weeks.

I always knew that Europeans were more fashionable than Americans but I had no idea just how much people here adhere to the rules of style. I feel like there is an unwritten dress code for men and women in the city:

• Heels or boots are a must no matter the weather
• Stockings or tights with a stylish skirt or dress
• Jeans can be worn but always with high heels
• Girls cannot be without a fashionable coat and purse
• Hair is always neat and face powdered

The pressure to conform to the normal city fashion is reasonably strong. A few weeks ago, I wore snow boots to school (because I wanted to wear warm shoes) but I got some funny looks on the metro because they weren’t in style and it was slightly too warm to be wearing snow boots. Another time, I wore sneakers and a pair of girls across from me on the train continued to look at my shoes and giggle.

However, there is a reason why women are always extremely fashionable in the city. I learned from a local Russian that it is because women in Moscow are always on the prowl to find a husband so they must look their best every single day; ready to attract a man and to make a great first impression. I learned that there is some truth to this. Men here like stylish women. As I started dressing more fashionably, some of my Russian male classmates began to positively comment on my sense of style.

For the men, I have also noticed a dress code, but not as formal. The style for men usually consists of:

• Very nice dress shoes (usually black and leather)
• Nice dress pants or jeans
• A black pea coat and scarf
• And a sleek leather briefcase or satchel

Of course, not every single person in Moscow follows these norms. I’ve see men in tracksuits and outrageously dyed jeans and funny-looking Italian shoes. I’ve also seen women in jumpsuits sporting dreadlocks. However, if you want to blend in and look like a typical Russian, it’s best to follow the unwritten rules of style.

The connection between Spanish and American pop culture

Kaitlyn Richert is a sophomore double majoring in magazine journalism and informational graphics/publication design, with a minor in Spanish. She is studying abroad in Toledo, Spain for winter quarter 2012.

One thing that I learned before I left for Spain was that I would experience “culture shock” abroad, or feelings of disbelief or anxiety once I was thrown into its foreign culture and routine. There would be different food, different clothing, and a different mode of popular culture.

…Or so I had assumed.

Spaniards are fascinated by American pop culture. They dub hundreds of our movies and TV shows to enjoy – anything from flicks such as Forrest Gump and The Hangover to programs such as The Simpsons, Friends and Pimp My Ride. They repeatedly listen to the hip-hop and pop songs that have been played to death on Kiss months before they arrived here – think Katy Perry, Rihanna, Bruno Mars and LMFAO (If I hear Party Rock Anthem one more time…).

It’s hard to feel disconnected from pop culture at home when you can sit in any coffee shop or restaurant and hear Adele’s latest hit or some of the old 90′s tracks like Sweet Home Alabama or Slide. Spaniards even have the Goya Awards (Premios Goya), which recognizes national films. Like the Oscars, they generate buzz months before they air. In the realm of fashion, leather boots, scarves, off-the-shoulder tops and ripped jeans are still sold and worn here in Spain. People don’t leave the house in sweatpants, but generally, the clothing here is similar to that of the US. There is a McDonald’s within a half-a-mile radius of my house (although the prices are conspicuously higher) and when I traveled to Valencia and Barcelona, I saw other various American chains such as Subway, Burger King and Starbucks Coffee.

With all of this in mind, I have come to the conclusion that some of American culture has come around full circle back to Spain, just as the groups of Europeans — Muslims, Christians and Jews – long ago influenced American culture and society.

What’s so compelling about all of this, however, is that most Spaniards lack the desire to learn English. They are, essentially, listening to music and singing along, but they don’t comprehend what they’re saying. With movies, they seldom understand the reality of American culture. My host brother told me that he thinks all colleges in The States experience a young-adult life that resembles that of American Pie. And we all know that’s not true. Spaniards want our culture, they want our creations. But they take the easy way out with movies by dubbing them. Most of the translations I here are inaccurate, anyway.

This strikes me as interesting because I am, more or less, a pop culture fanatic — especially with music. Lyrics are very important to me and I cannot imagine living in a culture where I couldn’t understand most of them. Even at home, when a Pitbull or Shakira song comes on, I think there are enough Americans that can speak Spanish and can understand most of the vocabulary, but we have other options. I’d estimate that about 70 percent of the songs I hear in Spain are sung by American artists.

Don’t get me wrong – Spaniards have their own taste of music, too. Here are a few songs that are always on at the discotectas that I had not heard before I came here. I have grown to love them, and they have made me feel more connected to the pop culture that is true to the country and the language.

Au Si Eu Te Pego – Michel Teló
This song is actually in Portuguese, but it’s still very popular in Europe. I don’t understand most of it, but I just like the song — probably such as the Spaniards like American music, yet don’t understand it.

Loca (Spanish Version) – Shakira
This song is always on wherever I go. The video was filmed in Barcelona, and I was there last weekend. ¡Disfruta!

Initial Reaction to Spain by Faye Miller

Well, 12+ hours of travel later, I’m finally at my hostel (Way Hostel, Calle de Relatores). We landed in Madrid around 2:45pm local time, 8:45am back home. Having traveled to Spain before, I had somewhat of an idea of what to expect when I got off the plane. Let me tell you, the trip getting here was something. I’ve been to Spain before, and never have I ever been a victim of pick pocketing, but today I almost was. The two other people I traveled with and I decided to take the metro from the airport to our hostel instead of the taxi (the metro would cost 2 Euros, while the Taxi would be about 9-10 euros per person). We printed out the metro map, mapped out the route we would need to take including transfers and were ready to go! Towards the end of our half hour metro journey, while in the car, my friend gave me a funny look. We usually exchange these looks when there’s somebody funny around us, or even if somebody’s doing something odd or interesting. This look, however, was different. I instinctively turned around and to my surprise, there was an older man behind me who coincidentally pretended to fall and ”drop his book.” I  google searched pickpockets way too much before this trip to be clueless as to what was going on. He immediately picked up his book and hopped off the metro. I felt the zipper of my backpack to find that it was half open. Luckily, I was smart enough to know not to leave anything important in there – all he would have gotten was a handful of my extra underwear I packed in case my luggage was lost!

Aside from this semi-intimidating experience,  transitioning to Spanish life has gone quite smoothly. In fact, I credit the program leaders as well as my amazing host family for easing the initial shock of realizing that I am no longer in Athens, Ohio.  There are so many differences between the U.S. and Spanish culture. For example, for the Spanish, the largest meal of the day is lunch, which is generally served between 1-3pm.  Before dinner, which is usually pretty late at night, the Spanish tradition is to go out for some tapas. Tapas are essentially small appetizers. Ideally, you would go out with a group where everyone would order something different and pass it around.  Although I’ve yet to go out for tapas, I did go to a café for a late night snack of churros con chocolate – yum! Dinner is usually very light and is served anytime after 7, but it can be as late as 11 or 12. The eating habits here may or may not prove to be a little tricky for me, but I tell myself “So what? I’m in Spain!” This still does not feel real.

I think the strength and frequency of cultures shock depends strongly on the individual. If you have a sincere desire to learn about the culture, people and history of a place, then the initial differences you see between this place and home will be irrelevant. The world is certainly much bigger than Athens, Ohio. I’m  just one of many witnesses.

Being a Gringa by Kathryn Mitchell

I’m not a stranger to travel.  I’ve been to different parts of the world, seen many different things and experienced more than I have the patience or paper to document.  It’s a defining part of who I am, but coming to Mérida was different than all those times I stepped off an airplane.  I have never entered a country without having a return flight home two weeks later, perhaps even less.  While driving from Cancún down a dirt highway through the Yucatecan forests, I realized that I would not be returning in this direction for two and a half more months.  This was my new home.

I’ve never been so frustrated and amazed at the same time.  I’m an intermediate Spanish speaker, but the language barrier here is incredible.  There are just so many things that I don’t know how to do and, while that in itself is an adventure, it equally pushes me towards fluency because in short, it is absolutely necessary.  Without the ability to speak Spanish here, I wouldn’t even be able to have a conversation with my mamá about the weather—something that Americans talk about when in an awkward silence.  The only awkward silences here are knowing what to say, but not knowing how to say it.  I’m trapped in this little English bubble and I’m working to find a way out.

To begin, I know where nothing is.  I can’t tell up or down, east or west, in or out.  I’m so disoriented by this city of 800,000 people that the only thing I can do is figure it out.  So I went old school, put my GPS-enabled iPhone 4 away and looked at a giant map.  I studied this thing and approximated bus routes in order to get around the city – to school, to grocery stores, to shopping centers and to absolutely gorgeous sites.  I need to know where a laundromat is, where I can buy basic necessities and where I can find some culture.  The only word for what I have experienced in this last week is culture shock.

This is mainly because, not only is Mérida very different to me, but I am very different to it.  I am a fair-skinned, blonde-haired young woman who quite obviously does not know her way around; this is not a city when foreigners are a dime a dozen.  When American girls walk down the streets to school, the air is filled with whistles and exclamations of “Mamacita!” and “Ayiyiyi!”  Even in jeans and a v-neck tshirt, I have not had a quiet stroll yet.  In the clubs, or the discotecas, I have had Mexican girls come up to me and ask to touch my blonde hair, as they have never seen it before; in only a week, it has been braided three times by both men and women.

So far, we’ve traveled to the beach twice (it’s about 30 minutes away).  After getting lost for an hour and a half in the back streets of Progreso, we finally found the rest of our friends, sat back and enjoyed the sand (sorry, friends in the snow).  It was hot, we walked a lot and had no idea where we were, while getting hollered at on every corner.  But the truth is, getting lost was my favorite part of the day.  I got to photograph beautifully dilapidated houses, which were basically four cement walls with tin tied down over the top.  Laundry was hanging outside from frayed rope, stray dogs were running through the streets and children in dirty clothing were riding their bikes with bent spokes and tattered tassels from the handlebars.  I saw more in that hour than I have all year in the United States.

I am slowly but surely discovering how to fit into this new world, this new society, in order to make a niche for myself here in Mérida, México.  Within only a week, I find myself forgetting certain English words and my spelling proficiency is rapidly decreasing.  I’ll read something in English and in my head, I hear it in Spanish.  I’m having dreams about the Mexican culture.  I rode the city buses for the first time, proficiently communicated over the telephone and directed our taxi driver around the city to get to our house (of which I have now memorized the address).  I’m beginning to understand the Spanish Channel and I am slowly comprehending my Mayan Prose and Legends class.

The best way to integrate oneself into a culture is to speak the language.  Ask questions, make comments, read everything out loud.  For the most part, that’s the hardest part of fluency.  That’s my project for the next ten weeks: speak.  It’s why I’m here and it’s something I want to be able to do for the rest of my life.  The culture shock is immense but it is the most exhilarating feeling I’ve had in a long time.  ¡Bienvenido a México!

Sometimes Culture Shock Occurs After It All by Spencer Smith

Like eating a big Italian meal, spending two and a half months in Italy requires some digestion.  Sitting on a couch in my house in Springboro, Ohio, I find it difficult to write about my adventures in Italy.  I’ve been busy since the last time I wrote, and every experience wants to have release on paper (or a computer screen).

I spent Thanksgiving in Heidelberg, Germany with six other Americans.  Our program directors reserved a quaint little German restaurant for us, and we were served a Thanksgiving dinner to make us feel at home – turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, stuffing and pumpkin pie.   We spent the weekend touring the university at Heidelberg, which was founded in the 1400s – so there is history teeming around every corner of every building.  We were blessed with a tour guide who knew all there was to know about the area.  Heidelberg was extremely different than anything that I experienced in Italy.  It was quaint and small and friendly.  Strangely, though, I was happy when I arrived back in my busy, big, hectic Milan.

I spent the last month of my time in Milan working hard on my final paper.  I spent a lot of time in the philosophy library at the University of Milan, and on my last day there, the office awarded me with an official University of Milan library card.  Maybe it’s not all that useful at this point, but it seemed like an appropriate way to finish my time at the University of Milan.

The program I went through in Italy, EuroScholars, is set up in such a way that my main academic work was research with an advising professor.   My two and a half months were dedicated to research in metaphysics in philosophy and in the end, I was able to write a ten-page, single-spaced paper of original scholarship in the field.  It may not sound like much, but I’m ecstatic with the work I did in Italy as well as with the amazing cultural experience I was able to have.

After a couple of delayed flights, I finally made it home on December 17th.  I think I experienced more initial culture shock upon returning in America than I did when I arrived in Italy.  There’s something about returning to your own culture, your own slang, your own stories and your own family and friends that is surprisingly shocking.  I had a difficult time picking up on American slang when I got back, as if my ears weren’t capable of picking up on the words that had been absent in my European friends’ classroom-learned English.

The return also revealed new positive changes.  For example, the meek college student who tried to get away with asking minimal questions (aka pre-Italy Spencer) was nowhere to be found when I arrived in Newark, New Jersey and had 20 minutes to find my plane back to Dayton, Ohio.  I asked questions of every official I saw, rocketing myself through the airport with lightning speed.  This never would have happened before I was thrown into Italy without a single familiar face and hardly two words of Italian.  But once you have communicated with someone across languages, I guess communicating in your own language really isn’t that big of a deal.