Culture shock

Having been through it once before (and in a Spanish-speaking country, no less), I fancied myself immune to, or at least well prepared for, the ugly confusion and loneliness of culture shock. As you can probably glean from the structure of that sentence, I was mistaken.

I spent months working on my Argentine accent, perfecting their unique verb forms and the strange way their teeth sink into their double “L”s. I spent years learning the harsh consonants of Mexican Spanish and the peculiarities of the vocabularies of Chicano and Central American novelists and of the poets of the Southern Cone. But nothing in my years of practice prepared me for the mysterious and complete disappearance of the letter “s.” Instead of biting this crucial letter, the people of this region push it through parted teeth on a lazy tongue, or forsake it altogether. I can’t understand a damn word. I can’t distinguish the plural from the singular, the second person from the third, the past from the future. This has been unexpectedly crippling. Every conversation I have withers into confusion and futility, eliciting a sympathetic shrug of surrender from my interlocutor and leaving me feel stupid and helpless.

Then there are the simpler things. I don’t know how to get a waiter’s attention; the casual wave of the US is ignored and the wagging index finger of Latin America elicits such irritation that I can only assume it’s a Spanish faux pas. I’ve observed other patrons and cannot for the life of me understand it. I can’t figure out which side of the sidewalk to walk on; both have earned me that awkward left-right dance and irritated sighs and stares. I get cut in lines and have no idea why—is cutting common and you have to fight for you space? Should I have been standing closer to the person in front of me? Am I supposed to let older people get in front of me?

Then there’s the one issue I was expecting: foreigner fascination. Even on the crowded streets of Buenos Aires, where varied European and South American blood creates a reasonably diverse scene, my orange hair and pale skin called attention. So in a small, monochromatic town like Zafra, I am unsurprised to find people staring. But God, they really stare. Maybe I’m missing something here—maybe eye contact lingers longer before it’s considered rude, maybe people-watching is less subtle and more acceptable here. And maybe I’m oversensitive. But I have yet to venture outside of my apartment without attracting blatant, undisguised stares. It’s exhausting to always feel this exposed.

In the face of a language barrier, confusion on daily customs, and my obvious status as an outsider, I’ve lately felt that creeping loneliness I first felt in Argentina. I spend more time in my apartment than I should, hoping to avoid these awkward moments, and I find myself feeling very alone.

But I’ve been here before and I know that there is only one cure for culture shock: fearlessness. You have to have those awkward conversations and be unafraid to ask for endless repetitions of the same phrases. You have to lose your concern for blending before you can blend. Fuck-ups are constant and unavoidable when you’re in an unfamiliar culture, and the best thing you can do is shed your fears and just keep on fucking up until you learn.

This is the burst of logic I experience today, and it prompts me to drag myself off my couch and walk to the Feria Internacional Ganadera de Zafra, a nationally-famous agriculture fair currently taking place a few minutes’ walk from the town center. Ironically, the scene I encounter entirely cures me of my homesickness and reminds me why I left the States in the first place. This deep-fried, beer-soaked, inflatable plastic nightmare may as well have been cut out of the fairgrounds of Springfield, Illinois and pasted into the Spanish countryside. A livestock tent occupies the center of the grounds, releasing a familiar stench that blends with those of the deep fryers, sugars, and meats of the food vendors to create that uniquely nauseating aroma of a state fair. Preteen girls in truly impressive amounts of makeup wander through the masses popping their gum as their pimply male sidekicks clumsily grope their bare midriffs. The ground in littered with half-eaten chunks of meat, churro wrappers, plastic cups and discarded raffle tickets so thick I have a hard time getting my flip-flops through it. Beer tents pour out drunken teenagers and twenty-somethings accompanied by the choking blend of tobacco and pot smoke. Small children fling themselves around in enormous moonbounce structures shaped like SpongeBob, Shrek, and Homer Simpson, while mullet-rocking carnies operate rickety little rollercoasters and bumpercar pavilions. I feel right at home.

After getting the hell out of there, I stop by the pizzeria across the road from my apartment. I’ve come to love this little place, not only because the pizza is delicious and ludicrously cheap (€2.50 dinner), but also because it’s run by an Italian family who blend in in Zafra about as well as I do. They spend their days shouting at each other in their own language, watching an Italian news station at incredible volume, and laughing more boisterously and honestly than I’ve ever heard in Spain. The three kids, all in their late twenties, seem to speak solid Spanish, but the father tends to stick to Italian, turning up the volume and slowing down the pace in hopes that the close relationship between these languages will carry him through. The first time I talked to him he seemed surprised when I said Spanish was my second language, a compliment I took, given his lack of familiarity with the language, with a grain of salt—but I took it nonetheless. I can’t cook to save my life (please get here, Levi!) so I’ve already become a regular at this place, and they are endlessly welcome and friendly to me. It’s been a real help on my rougher days, just a little thing I for some reason find comforting.

I have three more days to kill, and on Wednesday the lethargy and loneliness will finally break. I start work that morning. My first task is to tell a group of Spanish teenagers all about America (where do you start?). Afterward I’ll race home and wait for Levi, who arrives in the late afternoon! And life in Zafra begins!