"Find yourself, I'm right here": Living through the culture shock

My father lived in New York during his teens and later served in the United States Air Force, so having spent a substantial part of his life in the U.S, he had developed an "American lifestyle". I was raised under this hybrid of American and Ecuadorian value system, which might explain why every time I would watch Home Alone, I'd ask my father "Daddy, when are we moving to the U.S?"

At the age of nine, my family and I moved to New York. Even though my household was relatively Americanized, the culture shock still impacted me. For nine years, I only truly knew one world and that world was Guayaquil, Ecuador. It only took a seven hour plane ride to change everything.

This new land was amazing! It had all four seasons, not just two, which was pretty exciting to tell you the truth. I mean, shopping for four seasons? The thought of it was just nuts to me! It was also the first time I had heard the now familiar summer jingle of the ice cream truck, a jingle that soon replaced the simple bell ringing from the ice cream man riding his bicycle around the unpaved neighborhood. But the biggest change wasn't material but more of a change of perception of the world.

When I started the fourth grade classes in the Middle of February, classes were already in session and I was put into this elementary school in Brooklyn, New York, in a bilingual classroom that was supposed to make it easier to learn English. In a classroom full of bilingual kids, you'd think they'd have some sympathy for someone who only knows one language? They didn't. No mercy. I was on my own when it came to learning the language, and I learned that the key was repetition. One thing I kept hearing kids say was "I don't feel like doing this" or "I feel like doing that". I didn't know what this meant exactly and I asked my parents, but they didn't really know how to explain it. Even once I learned what it meant, I didn't know how to translate it into my own language.

The idea of an inner motivation that was so intense that it could keep you from doing your chores or wanting to eat the liver stew your mother made for dinner was so strange to me. It's not like people in my culture didn't voice their choices of not liking something or doing something because they liked it. The difference was, or at least what it seemed to be, that when you "feel like doing something" or "don't feel like it", you're indirectly showing preference for no apparent reason. You just did it because you did it and that was that.

As I got accustomed to the American culture, I understood the concept better, and later I realized that Americans valued the individual and his or her points of views and input much more than my culture, where the value and focus was more on the family and not as much on its individual members. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Being raised as an Ecuadorian in a place where American values must be adapted was much more intense than the original mixture of American and Ecuadorian values. It made figuring out life and my priorities a whole lot more difficult. However, it made me a stronger person because of it.

It's been eleven years since I stepped out of that plane. Seeing myself as a bilingual Hispanic woman, getting an education and working hard towards my career, i realize the culture shock was not in vain.