I do not know about you, but I never lived in a country, but mine, Bolivia. But, let me tell you that living in the United States is a comedy for me. It is maybe because of my background that In the last 3 months I had so many cultural shocks, it is driving me crazy! These shocks come from simple things to difficult concepts. Sometimes I feel like an alien.

Remember what I said about simple experiences? Well, believe me, or not, on my first day in college, I was struggling to open the entrance door. It sounds silly but there is an explanation for this situation. I am from Bolivia, and the way we open doors in my country is different. To enter a place like a bank, a hospital, or any other office, you have to push the door and to leave that place you need to pull it. And, at least at Salt Lake Community College, it is more likely to pull a door to open it. I did completely the opposite, I was trying to open the door by pushing it. That was my first day of college, January 11, 2021. It was snowing, completely white everywhere, and freezing cold. And there I was, standing in front of the door to the AAB building to take my first class. I was with my mom trying to open the door. We pushed it and nothing happened, and my mom said “It might be closed, let’s try another”. So we decided to look for another door. We walked on the sidewalk near the classroom windows until we found another door. At that point, everyone saw us trying to open a door. We tried to open that one too, and we failed. At that moment, we did not understand what was happening. Suddenly, a girl around my age came up to us, and said, “Excuse me”, and pulled the door open. What a shame! I stared in disbelief. Neither one of us, me or my mom thought about pulling the door, we just wanted to open the door the way we do it in Bolivia. There are so many things that we take for granted when we are used to doing something in a certain way. It sometimes keeps on happening to me when I am alone, and each time I have another good story to tell!

Since that day, my cultural shocks continued, but this time it was not me making myself ridiculous. It was about something new to me, but that I ended up thinking “that is really ingenious”. What happened is that I went to the SLCC Health Center asking to schedule an appointment to get the MMR vaccine. I scheduled an appointment, and I was about to leave. And, I saw a large table in the hallway, that had lots of flyers and stuff. I saw a jar that contained little bags. And, since I was not wearing my glasses, I thought it had candies inside or something like that. But, nope, those were not candies. Those were condoms. I was shocked, I never saw one before in a public place, and far less for free. In my country, we are really close-minded, so we barely talk about those topics, of sexuality and birth control. In Bolivia, most of the young men have to buy them almost hiding from others. I remember I took a picture of it because I could not believe it. Someone came after me and said, “You can take them” and I said, “Oh, well thanks”. Anyway, I do not need them, I just was surprised. Then I left and went upstairs. That is another good story!

During the time I am in the United States, I found out that culture is more than the language barriers. Even though there are sometimes I feel that I can not fully transmit my ideas and/or feelings because of the language barriers, there are more surprises than those.

I joined the Latino young single adults at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. I met people from so many other countries, like Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and so on. They all speak Spanish, as I do. And it is really fun to spent time with them, but there are moments when we do not really understand each other. In most cases, it is because of some typical idioms of each country. In my case, I am from Bolivia, and all my life I used the word “Capa or capo” to refer to a person that is really good at doing something or that is really brave because of doing something. The thing is that there is no other country that uses that word, and there is not an equivalent to it in Spanish. That is how I found out that there are cultural limits and shocks that can occur even between people using the same language.

Three months ago I would never think about cultural shocks, I never had one before. In my country, there is an average behavior and that is it. And about holidays, we all know the holidays in the whole country. And, it is unusual to know people from outside the country so I had never been so exposed to other cultures. I find it amazing the way people can be so different because of their background. Even more interesting is the fact that all these stories happened to me in just the last three months.