RE: This is not a study abroad blog post (3/18/2015)

Writing for the audience back home does reinforce the mentality of viewing life abroad from an American perspective, but it’s a symptom, not a cause of this “ ‘traveler’ mentality.” We students are so comfortable in American culture, and we have easy enough access to it even when abroad thanks to the internet, that we lack the desire or impetus to try on another culture for size. Not keeping a blog doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll become part of the local culture.

The issue is that we learn to live as Americans surrounded by a foreign culture instead of assimilating into that culture. When I was in Japan, it was hard enough for me to eat an unfamiliar cuisine, communicate in Japanese and adjust to communal bathing, let alone abandon the comfort of my American self for a new set of cultural values and way of thinking. Culture shock after culture shock wears down our endurance and ability to integrate, and we fall back on our American point of view, regardless of whether we’re keeping a ‘study-a-blog’ or not.