My cultural underpinnings were first rooted in my Indian reservation in Virginia, yet my world expanded from those years of living in a tight-knit Native American community to being an American student abroad and later a twelve-year expat and a spouse of a European. These culturally vast experiences obviously were in stark contrast to how I grew up on a reservation in the Tidewater area of this state. The time abroad enjoying the delights of other cultures through the profession of teaching and traveling did not end when I returned home. The journey has continued stateside through my world of teaching second language learners in the K-12 educational system, community college, adult education, and universities. Thus, living in my home country, I can still be in relationships with people of other cultures.
Everyone loves their own tribe and its familiar ways, which play a huge role in preserving one’s own culture. Traveling and sojourning can sometimes be uncomfortable at best when we Westerners encounter others who do not ascribe to the same cultural ideals that we hold dearly. We like the familiar, and when we travel, inadvertently, we are looking for that familiar sense of home. However, in our world of globalization, we fail to realize that if all cultures continue to be more Westernized, then we lose the reason for traveling and adventure in the quest for the unknown and unfamiliar.
While studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain, in my junior university year, I learned to adjust to the Iberian. I experienced shifts in my thoughts and perspectives and acquired another set of lenses through which to view the world while being outside of my home cultural ways. Learning to navigate through culture shock and cultural adjustment brought growth and refinement to my experience and knowledge of a culture not found in the US. Yet, I could have missed out on this cultural enrichment while abroad. I could have chosen “an American experience in a non-American place” and come away culturally poorer from my new encounters. Eating at McDonalds while abroad instead of the local food, stopping in at Starbucks rather than the local café house, or visiting Disneyland abroad instead of venturing out to activities and parks that locals enjoy. While still enjoying the physical beauty of where I was traveling, I would have missed out on the richness of interacting and forming relationships with those of another culture simply because I didn’t want to give up the familiar. Not wanting to venture out past my personal borders to have experiences with those who lived in my “new home” abroad would have left me bereft of the cultural richness of those culturally unlike me.
So, what’s an American – to be precise – a North American – supposed to keep in mind when traveling? Perhaps a few personal stories would be a beginning in answering that question.
During one summer of my season of living in Prague, my husband and our first son set out for a trip across the Czech Republic, Austria, and the Dolomites for a vacation in Italy. We passed up on staying in hotels not locally operated and opted for a Tuscan farmhouse outside of the city of Siena. My fluency in Spanish facilitated our ability to communicate in rudimentary Italian. The locals were gracious and complimented me for trying to converse with them in our common language, Lengua Franca. We frequently asked them about the best places to visit, and they were not disappointed with their suggestions. Local wine and cheese festivals attracted us to areas far from the crowded villages of Tuscany filled with summer travelers. Not that the beautiful hilltop cities were not desirable, for there are many historical and cultural treasures to see in these places, but we did not want the cities to be our only reference to Italian life. We did not always know where we were going – this was the time before GPS and cell phones to navigate – but stopping along the way for local directions created many memories of engaging with those of persona characterized by much Latin vitality and heart. We stopped at farmhouses not advertised as tourist destinations and ate delectable food grown in the planters’ fertile fields. It was from these experiences that we began to savor the authentic Italian countryside living and the good-spirited Italian personality.
While in Turkey one summer on vacation in a sea coastal town, we wanted to visit a local village. The hotel staff advised us that we could call a taxi, but it would be cheaper to wait for the nearby dolmuş, which is a local bus/taxi in Turkey that goes to any local destination a rider requests. We weren’t quite sure where we would end up given our lack of speaking Turkish, but we arrived at our desired location eventually and enjoyed a countryside ride with the locals, with the women effusively commenting on our two-year-old sitting between us.
On another trip in the Acquaviva Picena region of Italy on the Adriatic, we vacationed in August along with all the Italians who had the whole month off! Hardly any Americans were there, and as for the food, there were no hamburgers and fries – just homemade pasta with fresh seafood; where our waiter retorted to my request for butter, “No burro on the pasta. It destroys it!” This one waiter changed our way of eating pasta forever. To this day, my husband insists we cannot slather butter on our noodles, just simple olive oil.
In all our travels throughout Europe, we did not frequent lodgings that were part of American hotel chains. My husband was eager for me to experience the Czech way of staying at small “pensions,” where breakfast with cheeses, meat, bread, and eggs was shared at community tables with other Czechs. Time for conversation and good food with those at our table who were no longer strangers. In the arena of sea travel, my husband has not signaled any interest in a cruise vacation. He is not so avid about traveling with other tourists who all get off at the same stop on a touristy island where the locals know that American travelers will pay exorbitant prices for souvenirs many times not even made in their country. He opines that the cruise experience is curated for the one who does not want to have to really venture into the not-so-beaten tracks away from the touristy path. There is nothing wrong with relishing the comfort of “not venturing out of one’s culture zone,” but it seems a more excellent choice when traveling outside of our country to also experience something other than what is the familiarity of “home.”
My life here in the USA is filled with people from other cultures. It is like working for National Geographic, but I do not travel to my assignments, they come to me in the form of my students in my classes. I have eaten and imbibed drinks in the homes of many students, young and old, over the years. Once, there was an incident of one of my students bringing a live duck in a burlap bag to my house. He wanted to kill it right there on the carport so that we could eat it fresh for lunch! I have invited my students and their families into my life by giving them a place to tell stories from “home” around food and drink that I did not know the names of but were as delicious as any restaurant fare that I ordered. I have danced with Africans after a meal of chicken grilled outside, savored spices from the Caribbean that I did not know the names of, eaten horse meat from my students of eastern lands, sung songs in another language that I did not understand, and observed holiday celebrations with beautiful families that have no similar cultural reference here in the US.
Perhaps, as we Americans travel with curiosity and openness, we will find that on the return trip home, we have become more adept at opening the door to becoming acquainted with those previously unknown to us who live right alongside us – in our schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, churches, and cities. In coming home to familiar ways that we love, perhaps we realize that we have become those travelers who are not the “Ugly Americans” but the Americans who are open and changed because of the unique cultural experiences from the new worlds we have traveled to.
Happy summer planning of travels wherever they take you. May you experience the people and their culture while you are there amongst them. And may your travels to new places be such that on your return, you become more inquisitive and experience the different cultures right in your own backyard. I know I have, and we are all the richer for it.
BON VOYAGE!
St. Augustine – “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
Dawn Custalow is an EL educator and teaches students who do not speak English as their first language. She currently works at William Fleming high school in Roanoke. She enjoys writing as well as public speaking on themes of education, cultural training, and Virginia Indian history – both past and present. Dawn is an alum of VA Tech and an enrolled tribal member of the Mattaponi Indian reservation in West Point, Virginia.