The U Curve

Because I've experienced it before I'm prepared to face the U Curve, the process of adjusting to a new culture. This is an essay I wrote for a creative nonfiction class about my journey through the U Curve while in Spain:



The process of adjusting to a new culture is often called culture shock. In the 1970’s cross-cultural researchers found that culture shock follows four distinct phases:

1) Honeymoon

When I stepped off the bus in San Sebastian, the place that was to be my home for a year, I proceeded to pronounce that it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Everything I saw was charming.

“Oh, look! Naked men playing soccer on the beach. How European.”

“No air conditioning? How quaint!”

“Isn’t the siesta just the most wonderful thing? It’s great that this country makes rest a priority.”

I loved the coffee in its tiny mug, the way the courtyard looked when the clotheslines were filled with laundry. I couldn’t get over how cute my three-year-old Spanish brother looked with his rat tail, or how my Spanish mother, Annabelle, rocked her fashion mullet.

I went shopping and bought bags to go with my shoes and shoes to go with my bags. “The Spanish are so fashionable,” I said. “Real trendsetters.”

2) Anxiety

Annabelle kept asking me if I was constipated.
“Sarita, estas constipada?”
“Um, no.”
Much later I realized that she was referring to my sniffle; asking me if my face, not my colon, was congested.

It took me a long time before I realized why people were staring at me on the street: my habit of eating breakfast while walking to school was apparently as offensive to the citizens of San Sebastian as someone scratching their butt for everyone to see.

In the narrow streets of the old part of town people shoved their faces in mine and booed,
“Buuuush.”
“I didn’t vote for him!” I shrieked back.

Just about every week the McDonald’s was vandalized.

I couldn’t understand how everyone seemed to know I was American before I even opened my mouth.

Annabelle’s hairstyle didn’t look half as cool when it was on my head. Despite practicing for days I still couldn’t convey to the hairdresser that I didn’t want something that was short in the front and long in the back.

Why, when ordering a vegetable sandwich did I have to specify that I wanted it without ham?

My roommate, Paula, took me to visit her parent’s house. Everyone was raving about the morcilla, a sausage made with pig’s blood.
“Come on, try it,” they urged me. “It’s really delicious.”
“I’m sure it is, it’s just that I don’t eat meat.”
“Sarah,” Paula scolded, “this isn’t meat, it’s blood.”

3) Depression

In Spain the rain does not fall mostly in the plains. The coastal city of San Sebastian experienced rain for the entire month of January.

Clotheslines lost their charm. I began to hang laundry in the courtyard while muttering, “What kind of piece of shit country doesn’t even have dryers?”

I wore sweatshirts around town.
“It’s ridiculous the time Spanish women spend getting dressed,” I would tell anyone who was interested. “It’s really no wonder why they don’t have any rights. If they dedicated the time they spent shopping to fighting for equality they would have it by now.”

I watched sports on tv and rooted against Spain.

The coffee started to give me a stomach ache.

I couldn’t find sour cream, Mexican food or peanut butter anywhere.

I began counting down the days until I could leave Spain.

People smoked everywhere, in line at the bank, in the movie theater, in the bakery. I saw an enormously pregnant woman smoking in a restaurant.

After running through the city looking for an open grocery store for two hours, I kicked the gates of the fifth and final try, cursed the siesta and everything about the backwards customs of a ridiculous country.

Walking down the street on a Sunday afternoon I smiled at a man who reminded me of my grandfather, “Hey green eyes,” he snarled back, “you want to fuck?” I took up scowling after that.

4) Adjustment

My friend Kelly and I went to France for sour cream, came back, made nachos, drank three bottles of wine and marched through the neighborhood singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

I found a grocery store that was open all day.

I tried pork.

The sun came out.