Between Dead Soldiers and the Amish

Surprisingly, coming to AU was a big culture shock for me. I grew up in York, Pennsylvania, and many people have no idea where that is. Therefore, some friends and I always end up saying that we're from a place in between dead soldiers (Gettysburg, PA—home of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg of 1863) and the Amish (Lancaster, PA—which has a large Amish population). We use those 2 places to give people a general idea of the location of where I'm from. Makes York sound like a great place, I know.

Until coming to AU, I had no idea how sheltered and lacking in diversity York, PA was. I generally thought that most communities were like my own. Now, I knew that outside of the US, life was very different from my own but I would have never thought that there were so many cultural differences within the United States. My town is generally all white, Christian, and Republican, so needless to say, the makeup of my high school was basically of the same demographics. I never really got the chance to interact with people outside my culture until I came to American.

First semester; I am roomed in a triple with a Mexican-American and a Haitian-American. My first class was World Politics, in which I had classmates from Mongolia, Vietnam, Venezuela, Japan, and other countries from all over the world. Despite not being exposed to these cultures that were vastly different from my own, I loved every minute of being immersed in a pool of multiculturalism. Taking the US cultural quiz in the Martin and Nakayama book was a real eye-opener in the fact that the US is so diverse. I knew maybe one or two answers to the ten questions. Also, it wasn’t until I read the Hall article that I realized that cultural perceptions could be offensive. Just the way I live my life and my normal mannerisms could be misconstrued by people outside of my culture. This knowledge has made me aware that people judge everything I do and my most benign of intentions could mean a variety of things to them.