Alabama = Argentina... Right?

Ahhh Alabama: The great state where people only care to focus on southern pride and tradition. Being a native of a place of such class, it's difficult to prepare myself for a shift in culture that's going to happen when I visit Argentina in the spring. On the bright side, at least I get FOUR MONTHS to try out all the different styles of grits and cornbread that are made in Argentina! The only problem is that, to my dismay, they don’t have grits NOR cornbread down there, which means I really AM going to be in an entirely different culture. 

How does a person like myself—one much more used to the rolling of the Alabama Crimson Tide than with the rolling of an “R”—get accommodated with the unpredictable culture differences that I’m going to face?

To answer this question, I’m going to venture where no Alabamian has ever gone... I’m going to be OPEN-MINDED.

No! By open-minded I DON’T mean that I’m going to say yes to all the drugs in Argentina.

NO! By open-minded I DEFINITELY don’t mean I will try to enjoy listening to songs by Miley Cyrus.

By open-minded, I mean that I’m going to try and look at the grand scheme of things the whole time I’m in Argentina. While this certainly won’t be an easy task the whole time, I think it’s a valuable tool to have while I’m in another country. 

How exactly will I use this never-before-seen-in-Alabama tool?

First off, there is a HIGH possibility (100% still counts as a possibility, right?) that I won’t understand every word that is spoken to me in Spanish while I’m in Argentina. 

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy staring blankly into the face of someone who is waiting for a response to the question they asked just as much as the next guy, but for some reason I sense the possibility of some possible frustration from this. Even if that’s the case, I’m going to try my best to stay open-minded. In this case, I just need to remember that one of the main reasons I’m there is to LEARN. If I went to Argentina already knowing how to speak perfect Spanish, my idea would be flawed. Keeping an open mind tells me that I am absolutely doing the right thing in the right place if I DO get frustrated when I realize that I am, in fact, an Alabamian gringo and not an Argentinian fútbol star... Shocking, I know.

At least I can rely on one thing to be the same while I’m in Argentina: southern hospitality!! Lets be honest, all I’m doing is going from the southern states to the southern hemisphere. 

I know... I’m wrong.

Even though I know people won’t be super eager and ready to be mean to me in Argentina, I also expect that there are some things, like southern hospitality, that I could miss from my culture. Again, I think that an open-mind could even help me when I miss things from my culture. Yes; even when I miss my momma. I think an open mind in this case would help me realize that, even though this culture isn’t my culture, it’s still a culture. Yes, there will almost certainly be things that I don’t like, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that I DO like. It helps that I’m generally a positive person. It’ll definitely be hard to enjoy the culture when I realize things like, “You mean you don’t wave at everyone you pass?” or “You mean you DON’T fry that?” Even so, I think opening up my mind to their culture will help me find a lot of things that I like about it too. 

Of course I will face more challenges than fried food vs non-fried food in the cultural change, but I think an open-mind can have many forms and help me in many ways. Whether it be that I focus on Argentinian fútbol instead of Alabama football or that I focus on the host family that is there instead of my real family that isn’t there, I think that thinking about things with an open mind will help a lot.