Cultural of the Foreignness Definition - Essay Example

15 February Foreignness This topic took me a lot of time to decide what has affectedmy life, whether positive or negative. Nonetheless, finally I decided to write about something that has had a great impact upon my life and that played a very important part in changing me as a person. It was my experience in a foreign country. Everyone has something in life that means a lot to him. Likewise, such a thing in my life is my experience of foreignness. Foreignness hasn’t changed my life, but it has changed me. Foreignness has changed the whole Musab. This to me means more than just my life. It has created a new edition of me; a new Musab who wasn’t living before, like a baby who just got born and sprang to life. Although, like most people face problems on the first part of foreignness like being lonely, and depressed, especially when feeling homesick, I have also gone through all this. Lack communication and getting to understand a new culture are two of the most important things that I faced as a foreign. Foreignness put me into a culture shock in the start, but ultimately made me a better person as a whole. The difference of cultures has a huge part of changing a person, either living with it and blinding in with people or quitting and going back home early. Lack of communications that I faced gave me the sense of depression at first. I couldn’t communicate and give meanings as well as I wanted it to be. For instance, when I need some help in directions, it always gets me to an impressed situation till I know the place that I wanted to go to, which way it would be better to get there, how far the place could be, and things like that would get the person who I’m asking to be really confused because I do not know how exactly should I express what I want. I used to feel very awkward asking others for help as it took me a lot of time to express my saying to them. So much time that it took made others feel bored. Also, many people simply could not understand what I was saying. This made me even more tensed. However, there are some cases like the one I just mentioned. When people are saying jokes, I barley can catch them. Honestly, most of the times I don’t, which others feel like I’m not interesting to hear it, but I do. This was because the sort of culture I come from is completely different from the one that exists in the USA. In order to understand people’s jokes in a culture, it is very important to understand their perspectives which I totally did not understand in the start. Nonetheless, when I want to order something to stuff my stomach with. There are some differences that I’m not used to, like the way people order. In addition to that, the food was also very different in look, type and taste. Lack of communications has a lot of common in getting to understand the new culture. It takes me a lot of time, especially when I’m living in a culture that is completely different than mine, and what I used to. In the start, I was very weak in the language that was spoken in the USA. It took a lot of time to learn it so much that I could express myself in it. The difference of cultures has a huge part of changing a person, either living with it and blinding in with people or quitting and going back home early. Getting to understand the basics of the new culture, which seems the whole different comparing to my culture that I came from is difficult to live with at the beginning. For example, when I came to the United States for the first time, I had a culture shock that all other people are different than I. In my culture, I used to shake hands whenever I saw a relative, friend, or even if I want to talk to somebody. However, it’s totally different in the United States, people don’t have to shake hands, they can only say hi whether by saying it or raising their hands. Another thing in my culture is that whenever somebody wants to talk with an older person, it is out of respect to not make an eye contact with him or her, but it is the whole different in America. In the United States a person has to make an eye contact to other to show respect to him or her. Foreignness has changed me in the way I think, I do, I choose, and even I decide. Sometimes, I feel like that I’m the only stranger in the surrounding, but the courage inside of me always pushes me out to just live a simple life, so I can reach my goal. I don’t mean that my community or my country has a different miserable way of doings, but actually me. What I was at home and what I am right now. Foreignness lets me have a different day everyday. I have a plan that should be done whether if it is studying, meeting friends, or even siting in Starbucks and having a cup of hot chocolate. Because of foreignness, my time has the value that I was missing. Because of foreignness, I started to be organized. For instance, before I was foreign, I wasn’t that organized person. Everything was misused, my appointments, my days which I had lost a lot of time of, my clothes and that is what mostly hate to remember. Every such shirt was out of the closet and on the floor, not because it was needed to be clean, but because I didn’t used to be organized. I had a person who was responsible of gathering and arraying thing I left. However, the wonderful thing that foreignness has is that no one is responsible of me. I do have the right to do anything whenever I want. No one would ask me what I’m doing or why. While that, it will appear if I came to do the goal that made me came in or not. Concluding, a person faces a lot of challenges when he goes to a foreign land, particularly in the initial days or months. Things were very difficult for me in the start as I had to deal with a totally new culture without anybody’s help as I was totally alone there. In the start, I faced difficulty communicating with people, understanding their norms and values, and most importantly looking at things from their cultural perspective. It took me a lot of time learning the actions of respect in the new culture as they were different from the culture I had come from. Although it took me a lot of time to adjust in the new culture, foreignness did some very good things to me. Foreignness has made me more organized and independent. Now the kind of person I am is very different from the kind of person I was in the past. I thing everything has changed in a good way and I have become more responsible. Foreignness gave me a chance to restart my life as a different and improved person. I have learnt things that I could never learn in my own country. Foreignness always lets me think about that family who are waiting for the little short Musab to come completing the mission that caused him to go abroad. Foreignness is a challenge, a mystery, and interesting, so that is why I chose to write about, to describe how hard it is, and how nice it is too. Read More