I don't have much on Tara. It's probably because I didn't like her very much or at least didn't really respect her as a speaker. She was living a pretty impressive life, but it depends on what impresses you.
The main thing that I gained from Tara was culture shock. Knowledge about culture shock that is. She gave us a very nice emotional time line and a quick run down of the five stages of culture shock. It was all quite informative but at the time I thought it was all well and good, for someone else. Now I've never really been in another culture (unless you want to get picky with the definition of that word and before you say it I know that every person carries their own culture) but I have proven to be quiet adaptable when the time comes and as long as they give me time, I'll eat most things. Change doesn't really bother me but then again I've never been in change that is all that threatening to me.
My point is that I didn't think it was useful but because it was such a nice visual, I wrote down the time line. I wish I could tell you that looking back on it now is causing me to have an epiphany that would make this post more exciting but I was right and wrong. I was wrong because I went through the stages of culture shock when I first starting outtatown. My expectations were unrealistic and it had been a while since I forced myself to make friends, I went in all wrong. I got shocked and it took until the canoe trip (4 or 5 days) for me to realize that. But then I adapted and things got better. I love it when I can be right too.
Another cool thing that we talked about was the difference between Passive and Active speech. The difference between "you broke a dish" and "a dish broke". Westerners usually use the active but many other people use the passive. I love stuff like this because it is crazy how much meaning is floating around 3 or 4 words and how easy it is to miss it. I really hope I can find some good examples of stuff like this in South Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment