Culture shock? I don't know what you mean...

Culture shock - : a sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation.

Is it just me, or do travelers more so than often have difficulty in accepting that culture shock is a perfectly normal thing? I know myself, that as an ex-student of Modern Foreign Languages, and one who loves nothing more than getting on plane to an unknown destination, that there are often times where we are too keen or perhaps overly enthusiastic on understanding a foreign culture that we find ourselves convincing one another  that ‘we don’t suffer from culture shock.’ No…we blame all our anger, frustration and confusion on anything and everything but ourselves. We are somewhat, ashamed to admit we are suffering from culture shock. Instead, we like to give off the vibe that we are completely cool with the ‘foreign’ way of doing things. 

This is something that has become more evident to me during my time in Colombia than anywhere else I have been. Being a lover of the Spanish language and pretty much anything Iberian, living abroad in a Spanish speaking country, particularly in Latin America has been something I have wanted to do for a long, long time. Nevertheless, the culture shock, as I am no longer afraid to call it, was something that I never expected to affect me so much. 

I mean, before coming to Colombia, I had been lucky to have had many opportunities to travel abroad in the past. Pretty much after having lived for one year in Beijing, China…I told myself that I could live anywhere in the world. Perhaps…just perhaps this was slightly overconfident and bearing on the edge of sheer ignorance. Days before I left for the noisy, dirty but somewhat ‘charming’ streets of Bogotá, I reminded myself that yes, whilst this would be a challenge and difficult in its own right, that I had survived a year in China. Beijing was sprawling, Beijing was noisy, and more than anything Beijing was both massively over-populated and overly-polluted.  In my mind, I had convinced myself that I was not going to be affected by culture shock on arrival in Colombia…at least not in the same way as I had been during my year abroad in China. How different could it be? - I ‘speak’ Spanish. I had studied enough about Latin America at university to understand the various economic, political and social instabilities that the country suffers from and had a real thirst to get to know on a personal level Colombia!

Two months down the line and Ryan hits a big brick wall…

For me, the first time I realise that I am suffering from culture shock is when I am considering moving house. Cutting a long, long story short, I had been previously living in Teusaquillo (scarily close to Santafe-not a barrio you want to find yourself in late at night…..or at any time of the day really for that matter) living with an eclectic mix of housemates from all over the world, literally. There were in total ten of us: A Colombian, an Australian, an Italian, a French girl, an American, a Scotsman, a half Iraqi-English guy, two English girls and myself (from Larne, Northern Ireland…just to make the house even more ‘exotic’!) 

Don’t get me wrong, I still love very much so my housemates, but I realised that I was living in a house and speaking more English and French than Spanish. I began to question my motives on coming to Colombia and where on earth had this hesitation to really throw myself in to the deep end come from. I had come to Colombia, to learn about the country, the people and the culture…and whilst living in a multi-cultural party house in Teusaquillo was fun and a cultural experience in itself, I wasn’t learning that much about Colombia, outside the hours I was putting in at work and from what I saw on the streets. I remember talking to a friend about possibilities of moving out. His advice was to throw myself head-first in to the culture, as difficult as it was and to forget about the ‘them and us’ view of the British citizen in Colombia. 

This is some of the best advice that I have received in Colombia. I don’t blame myself at all for taking the first two to three months easy and living with people that spoke my own language and understood my culture but I am glad that I realised that I needed to step out of my comfort zone and really soak up what it really means to be living in Colombia…and that means with Colombians (and 1 Bolivian guy from la Paz!) Currently, my house looks like this...Caterine from Cali, Tatiana from Manizales, Juan Manuel from Huila, Marcelo from la Paz and wee Ryan from Larne…I guess you could say we were quite the exotic bunch of folk!

I have found that this idea of ‘them and us’ is partially the source of most of the culture shock that we suffer on moving abroad. No matter how much we might look Colombian or no matter if we speak Spanish in a Colombian accent using all the local vocabulary…WE ARE NOT COLOMBIAN! It is ok to feel alienated at times from their culture. It is ok to feel frustrated with local culture and it is certainly ok to miss home and ‘our’ way of doing things. This is something that as a linguist, and a traveler that I have tried not to do. I have always tried to embrace the culture and that is not always so easy. You need to have friends around you. You need to have contact with your family and friends back home and you need to remain sane and remember why you chose to leave the comforts of your little room in Larne and move to the other side of the world.

In my next blog…I will go into these ‘differences’ a little more in detail. Yes, there are enough of them to merit their own blog entry! So, in conclusion, I guess what I am trying to get at in this blog is that it is ok to suffer from culture shock. When our friends and family ask us how we are on Skype or Facebook chat, we don’t always have to lie and say we’re having the most amazing time of our lives. It’s ok to rant and it’s ok to express what we find difficult about living abroad. What is important however is that we keep a positive mental attitude about our experience.

 I myself, have to often stop and tell myself that I am, to some extent living just a normal life here in Colombia. This is an experience…NOT a holiday. Therefore, there will be bad times and good times, just as there are and would be if I were working and living in the UK. Secondly, we must try (as hard as it can be) to knock down the barriers, that we put up ourselves of the ‘them and us’ idea. Living in a house where I only speak Spanish has been tough. It’s done wonders to my language skills, and opened my eyes to so many new cultural experiences…but I know I need to continue embracing the Colombian culture and lifestyle and difficult as that is. And finally, we need to try and appreciate the differences that exist between countries and people. I read recently that it is ‘our differences that unite us’. I personally believe that it would be boring if we were all the same race, spoke the same language, were the same religion and shared the same values. Difference is something we need to respect but also to accept. I don’t expect to ever stop suffering culture shock, but I’m no longer afraid to admit or recognise that I experience it…I think we’d all be crazy to do that!

Vive la révolution!

So, I reckon it’s about time that I did another blog entry. The past few weeks in this crazy city have been pretty manic to say the least, so much so that I don’t really know where to begin.

I have now been in Bogotá for about 6 weeks, though in some ways it feels like a lifetime. I’ve really gone through the emotions as such with this city. I loved it, then I hated it and then I loved it again but was slightly overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place. I guess that has something to do with culture shock, something that linguists and travellers don’t really like to admit they get. I have to state that I reckon I was pretty naïve coming here in the sense that I thought…’Colombia, how different can it really be?’ I mean, I had spent a year in China when I was a student at university, and so I thought I could pretty much handle anything. And, whilst yes, I am adapting to life here and starting to really love my job, friends and life here in Colombia, I would be lying if I said it had been easy.

There is something about Bogotá which is fascinates me. I’ll admit, it’s not the prettiest or most ‘aesthetically pleasing’ of cities I’ve been in, however there’s never a dull moment here. No walk down the same street is ever the same. Even on my walk to work which I must have done now over 100 times, I am enthralled by what is around me. The streets are a blend of rich and poor, modern and traditional colonial Spanish architecture and full of people. If you’re one for people watching, this city is definitely one that you must visit!

 Generally I feel very safe here, despite the constant threat of crime, which nowadays in Bogotá to be fair, seems to revolve much more around armed robberies and street muggings. So yea, whilst you have to be prepared to maybe cough up some money or your phone to a guy in the street (if so ever the situation arises, touch wood!) that’s a risk you have to take. However let’s be fair, this kind of thing can happen in any city, and it’s such a shame to let it prevent you from discovering this amazing city.

I’ve obviously had time to travel around Bogotá and take in the many sights and smells that it has to offer, some being better than others! I have managed to see the majority of the tourist sites including the infamous backpacker central ‘candelaria’ which despite it’s good and bad reputation depending on who you speak to is one of the ‘prettier’ sides to Bogotá. Needless to say, there is a wealth of good food and flea markets, galleries, museums, churches and the usual things that are on offer in any big Latin America city. I’ve also had the chance to travel out to Guatavita, the suppose site for the location of El Dorado, the lost city gold. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, like other Colombians and foreigners, I was unsuccessful in my attempts to discover it!

I sorted out my living accommodation pretty quickly upon arrival in Bogotá and am living in a big house with 9 other people in Teusaquillo, Soledad in ‘downtown’ Bogotá. I put ‘downtown’ in inverted commas, because I don’t want you thinking I live in some built up, cosmopolitan area, overlooked by towering buildings, banks and skyscrapers. That is perhaps the impression I had when I heard of the location. Instead, Teusaquillo is quite a quiet, humble and somewhat bohemian neighbourhood hosting an array of galleries, cafes, libraries, bookshops and restaurants. Being the little fatty that I am, I have thoroughly enjoyed discovering the various food joints the area has to offer and I am partial to the odd beer and empanada after work for about a pound!  

 It’s also right beside the parkway, a tree-lined avenida, which runs pretty much parallel to Carrera 28 down to la Universidad Nacional. On Sundays, the parkway serves as one of the roads of Bogotá’s ciclovía, an opportunity for all of Bogotá’s budding cyclists (though I have seen old men and women on roller blades) to take to the car and busueta-free streets and cycle till their wee hearts and content.  On a Sunday, whole families come out, with little kids playing on scooters, skateboards and rollerblades and couples walking their dogs. It does sound pretty naff but it’s so relaxing to spend a Sunday morning at the Parkway with the sun splitting the trees (which RARELY happens in Bogotá, being up in the Andes) and chilling out on, preferably with an ice cream from Crepes and Waffles…my latest guilty pleasure.

Things at work are going well. Of course there are the usual frustrations of life in Latin America, most of them revolving around lateness, slowness, bureaucracy, and general disorganisation. However, since my last blog was a bit of an opportunity for me to vent my frustrations I’m not going to get into that here! Whilst there are lots of frustrations living in Colombia, there is one heck of a lot of advantages. As you probably already know, this year I am working at ‘la Universidad Nacional de Colombia’ one of the most famous and ‘interesting’ institutions in Colombia. Stepping upon campus, one would think they had been jetted back in time to 1970’s Britain.

 Something of a hippy movement definitely still exists here, and the students really give a new meaning to the word alternative. Unless you have more than 3 piercings, at least one tattoo, own harem pants, have a Colombian friend with dreads and look generally pretty cool, you stand out somewhat on this campus. The walls are painted white at the start of the term and students see them as a blank canvas (literally!) to express their revolutionary, radical ideas, support political leaders, advertise strikes and marches and express their anti-government or anti-American ideology.  The smell of weed is never too far away, there is usually someone playing the guitar under a tree or on plaza Che and some Rastafarians selling vegetarian food, jewellery and random handicrafts.

 Within my first month of working at the university, I took part in a strike about professor salaries (was bored and just felt like joining in for the wee walk really) and seen my first anti-government demonstration including men in balaclavas throwing fireworks and ‘papa bombas’-a sort of handmade bomb designed to be thrown! (I like to think of it as the Colombian version of the standard Northern Irish petrol bomb which many of you will be familiar with!) Other than that, I’ve been going to salsa festivals, food festivals and generally eating and enjoying the various delights of Bogotá.

Anyway, I’ll stop here before I start babbling even more than I am already doing so! Besitos xxx

How do you solve a problem like María?

So I have now spent approximately three weeks in Bogotá and have eventually started to feel settled. Having lived in Beijing, a city with over 20 million inhabitants, I really didn’t expect to feel so claustrophobic in Bogotá, a city with only 7-8 million people. Nonetheless, this city seems massive and sprawling. Despite having been here close to a month, I am still only getting to grips with the area I live and work in, and outside that my knowledge of other barrios such as las Aguas, la Candelaria, Chapinero, la Macarena and la Zona Rosa is extremely limited.

My first few weeks here have felt like a whirlwind, and whilst it seems like only yesterday that I was saying goodbye to my family at Dublin airport, I kind of feel like I have been living here for a lifetime. Within the first week of being here, I managed to find a room in a lovely house in Teusaquillo, a quiet residential neighbourhood situated near the Universidad Nacional and the parkway, a tree-lined avenida with an array of cafes, restaurants, bars, theatres and museums. Choosing where to live in a foreign city is never an easy thing to do. I have found that there is only so much you can tell from an advertisement or a website and you certainly don’t want to feel or look like the only ‘gringo’ in the neighbourhood, especially in certain parts of Bogotá.

There is to some degree a certain bohemian population in Teusaquillo, and life seems a little slower and more relaxed here than in some other parts of the city. Living with Colombian, Argentinian, French, English/Iraqi, American and Australian housemates…there really is no excuse but to put my degree to use and speak English as little as possible. We all speak good Spanish and in some ways, whilst it is hard to come home and force myself to speak Spanish after work, it really pays off to take the time and put in the effort to speak the language of the country I am living in. I have also found that beer, wine, rum and aguardiente also have been known to increase confidence and fluency in speaking foreign languages.

I am thoroughly enjoying my new job however, not having a tutor or any real point of contact has been difficult to say the least over the past few weeks. It has even been upsetting to a point hearing about the treatment of other British Council people being taken on trips out of the city, or out for coffee or lunch and being offered cheap accommodation whilst I have essentially been dropped in a city and told to fend for myself. Nonetheless, being a grumpy little bitch never solved anyone’s problems and the key to finding my feet in Bogotá was to be proactive despite my lack of support from work.

Some of you might be wondering what I am actually talking about. Essentially, on my first day of work in which I was meant to be collected from a hotel by my tutor, María and taken to the university, introduced to the staff and teaching cohort, offered accommodation and introduced to my timetable etc., I was in fact not picked up for various hours whilst I had to make many phone calls to the university and the British Council both who were as equally confused as me as to what were the plans for the day. I was also informed that María was no longer my tutor and that in fact no one really knew if I had one.

About 4 hours of sitting around after everyone else was picked up by lovely looking, friendly, well-dressed Colombians I was eventually picked up by a man who introduced himself as Freddy, Freddy Kruger…not the kind of humour I was really wanting or appreciated at this time of the day. Of course Freddy did not actually know what was meant to happen after he picked me up and again various phone calls in broken English and Spanish were made and I was escorted off to La Universidad Nacional. On arrival, I had a conversation (which felt more like an intense interview) in Spanish with the Director of the School of Modern Languages and I was told that they were putting me in a hotel for a few nights until I could move into my apartment. ‘Thank goodness!’ I thought and, for once, all at the Nacional started to seem a little more positive…

HOWEVER, two days later, on leaving the hotel to go organise my Cedula (The ID, allowing you to reside within Colombia) I was informed by the reception of the hotel that I had to check out in 15 minutes and that the Nacional were only paying for two nights’ accommodation and after that I would have to pay a small fortune myself per night. So after a day of sorting out my Cedula (a bureaucratic, slow and tiresome process only to be rivalled by that of setting up a bank account/registering at a university in China) I returned to the hotel to pick up my life in a suitcase and find a hostel for the night, since I could not move in to my new house until the next day!!!

The next morning I moved into my new house and have never been so glad to have my own place. Thankfully, also that was the end (to some extent) of the problems at work. I still have no tutor and no one really knows who has responsibility over me. However, I understand that to some extent, this kind of problem is typical of South America. Everything here seems to move much slower here and people take a much more relaxed attitude to things than in the UK…ok that’s my Nacional rant over!

On the other side, general life in Colombia is going well. Most of my life revolves around food, mainly empanadas and other delicious snacks of the street. I enjoy attempting to salsa, dance like Colombians and going to food festivals at the weekend. Eating has become almost a hobby if mine, due to its cheapness. However I have now found a gym near my house and I’ve decided that enough is enough and it's time for my empanada belly to say bye bye. So anyway, I feel like all I have done is complain in this instalment and that I’m being a bit Carrie Bradshaw about the whole situation right now! I promise to have good things to say in the next update. Hasta pronto chicos xxx

So, this is my first ever blog. Despite the fact that I have spent time abroad on more than one occasion, I felt that now more than ever was a good time to keep a blog. So after having graduated with a degree in French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and completing my PGCE at the University of Sheffield, I felt that it was about time that I fulfilled my dream of working in South America in accepting a job with the British Council in Bogotá Colombia...

Why Colombia? Well, essentially Colombia is a country which has always interested me, despite it's poor international reputation. Sharing it's borders with Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Panama, Colombia is an ethnically diverse country with coastlines both in the pacific ocean and the carribean sea. It is one of the world's leading producers of coffee and can be divided into 5 main regions as per the climate and geography of this place. (the Pacific, Andes, Amazon, Eastern Plains and the Caribbean.) Colombia is also the birthplace of Shakira, Juanes and Carlos Vives, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Nobel Prize for Literature) and Elkin Patarroyo (Nobel prize for science after discovering the vaccine for Malaria)

Bogotá, the capital and my home for the next year (at least) is the largest and most populated city in Colombia and due to it's altitude ranks the third highest city in the world, after La Paz (Bolivia) and Quito (Ecuador)

Unfortunately, Bogotá may not have the best international reputation, and I have to admit that I did think twice about accepting the job. According to an annual 'Country RepTrack poll' Colombia scored the lowest of all Latin American countries in terms of safety. Furthermore, Colombia’s reputation ranks just below Angola and higher than only Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Due to a history of corruption, civil war, drug violence, kidnapping, guerrilla warefare, landmines, paramilitary groups (mainly FARC) and a high murder rate, it is understandable that Colombia may not, at first sight seem like the best country to chose to live and work in.

I have always been a fan of all things Iberian, ever since I was in school and coming to South America has always been something that I have wanted to do. Thankfully, Colombia's reputation is changing fast and whilst yes, kidnappings and daily mugging are a daily threat, the majority of Colombians I have met have been lovely and so eager to help and welcome you to their country. More recently, the Colombian government and tourism industry have taken the following attitude:

'La pasión de los Colombianos hace que el único riesgo que corre un extranjero cuando pisa esta tierra es que se quiera quedar.'

Or simpy, the passion of the Colombian people is that the only risk a foreigner runs in stepping onto this land is that of staying' (Excuse the terrible translation, its been a while since I graduated!)

Until a few years ago, people travelling in South America would have avoided Colombia at all costs. However, those who have spent any amount of time here will tell you what a wonderful country it is and how wonderful the people are who live here. Essentially, drugs (primarily cocaine) and the violence that has sparked from it has ruined this country's international reputation. However, there is so much more to this politically, culturally and ethnically rich and diverse country than that which first meets the eye.

Basically, I am pretty excited yet terrified about the near future and my new life in Bogotá! Keep reading if you want for more updates from this pretty amazing country!

Besitos xx