My first apartment. The space gives me every feeling of liberation and grown-up-ness I could hope for without a question. Buying food and inviting people to fill it are a part of this feeling. The woman I share it with, Susanne, is a perfect person with which to live. An American having worked as a translator here for years, she has all the advice I could ask for on how to live comfortably in this city - which is exactly the type of experience I was looking for on this trip. Of course, I do love the idea of immersing oneself in a culture and "doing as the Romans do", because it opens one's mind to completely different ways of thinking. However after this is achieved, learning how to coexist is perhaps more important and certainly more practical. It will help me decide if I can or even want to live in East Asia in the future and give me ideas on how to create a successful intersection of Eastern and Western culture. In actuality, if I worked here, then this goal of successful intersection would almost certainly be what I would be doing. Coming here with a goal of "coexisting" rather than "integrating" was a tough conclusion to reach, because at first glance it seems contradictory to the purpose of being on a fellowship to study abroad.Remembering Mr. Light speak recently at the Light Fellow's Reception, I'm even more split on this issue. He spoke of catastrophes that could have been avoided had
competent men been in a position to understand and work with foreign cultures (Arab in this case, as I recall). On the one hand, his perception of this fellowship's purpose is to integrate students into cultures closely, teaching them the nuances of foreign society. On the other hand, is coexisting with other cultures and learning the proper ways to allow our cultures to intersect not the overall goal of this experience?What do you think? I'm interested to hear your opinion on this distinction in goals between "integrating" and "coexisting".
This liberation is temporary, I know. Class schedules are distributed tomorrow, followed by book purchases and then the snowballing pressures that come with being a student. Until then, milk tea will flow and sleep will be had in my first pad that is not made of paper.
"What do you think? I'm interested to hear your opinion on this distinction in goals between 'integrating' and 'coexisting'."
ReplyDeleteGood question, David. I might work this into our blog prompts for the future. My thoughts?
I don't think it's possible to erase your old self and somehow meld into something 'other' than that self. It would be easy to misinterpret "integration" to mean that (and sometimes you'll see expats thinking that they ARE doing that). But I don't think that's what it means.
In my view, "integration" means you can get stuff done in that culture with minimal intercultural friction. This is kind of a respect for different ways of doing things, you could say. In other words, I think "co-existence" is similar, though that word (in my mind anyway) tends to imply more of a tolerance rather than a true working together.
Dr. Light's comments, which I've heard in many forms for some years now, really focus first just on RAW UNDERSTANDING of cultural differences and of histories other than our own. By that measure, Light Fellows reach that bar quite quickly. The question, though, is does that really translate to becoming more inter-culturally competent, as they say in the field?
We plan to track that! And I'd be interested in your thoughts.