My Cultural Journey

Prior to taking this course, I thought I knew what it meant to be versatile in various cultures. However, in reality, I really did not know as much as I thought I did. Last semester, I took part of the study abroad program to Costa Rica. I embarked on a cultural journey that forever changed my life. I was able to experience and embrace in a new and different culture than my own. I lived in Costa Rica for four months. While living there, I had opportunity to also travel to two other countries in Central America, Nicaragua and Panama. After living in another country for four months, I believed that I was culturally diverse; I believed that I knew what it was like to being cultural, little did I know that there was so much more than to living
First off, I was able to finally distinguish that fact that culture, ethnicity and race have three completely different meanings. Once learning about the meaning of culture and discovering how we as humans can fit into many various cultures, I was then able ‘categorize’ myself in a numerous amount of cultures that I never thought I were even considered as cultural. Second, I had this mentality that because I had already lived in Costa Rica, I was considered as open-minded to a culture/ethnicity than my own. I came into the course thinking that I was open to a new way of thinking, when in reality, I found myself being very ethnocentric in a numerous amount of cultural
In one of our class sessions, we had an activity where we were given scenarios and we would have to determine how we felt about the case being either ethnocentric or accepting to the case. It was this activity that made me and I would say many other of my classmates appear to be much more ethnocentric than they thought they were. Another interesting topic that I found myself intrigued in was how within the various cultures communicate. However, not just verbal communication; but also non-verbal communication as well. Ever since I began to learn about nonverbal communication among the various cultures we have, I have found myself noticing both myself and other individuals’ non-verbal communication such as: gestures, eye contact, hand motions and many