An American Abroad

From the cultural context-inventory, I found that I am somewhat on the high context side. This hopefully will make it easier to accustom myself to the culture of Spain as it is on the high context side as well. I believe for me some of my biggest strengths for adapting to a new culture is that I am fairly easy going, flexible, and good at going with the flow. I don’t tend to stress out in situations that I am unaccustomed to and I like learning about new ways of doing things. Culturally, besides the language, I think the biggest difference for me will be small things such as the differences with being on time, the difference in food, and eating times. However, as I said, I don’t think this is anything that will be too big of a challenge, just something that may take a little time to get used to. As far as educating others about the culture of being American, I can give them some of the general characteristics if one wants to know. I would inform them that we are pretty individualistic, goal-driven, and nationalistic people. We place a high importance on reaching our goals and we tend to always be busy and on the go. Whereas in many cultures people will just take the time to talk and hang out, many Americans don’t seem to have time for this. Lastly, it seems that we like to eat.