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My First Taste of Culture Shock

And the Realizations It Brought Me About Friendships

By Ramiro A. HernandezPublished 6 years ago 10 min read
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Ever since I was young, people always told me that friendships are among the most important things in life. Whether they give you emotional support or simply a place to crash for the weekend, friends are one of the most vital part of anyone's psyche. They are the ones you make lifelong memories with, the ones you argue with, and the ones you trust with the things you wouldn't tell your parents about. In many ways, they're extensions of the person you seek to be.

Living where I live, in a mostly rural city in Texas five minutes from the Mexican border, where the population is almost entirely Hispanic, friendships are something that aren't taken lightly. Like my grandma says, "Los amigos son como la sangre. Cuando se está herido, acuden sin que se los llame (Friends are like blood. When you're wounded, they come without being called)."

Seeing as how most of the people in my city are of Mexican descent, our community is somewhat isolated from the issues that politicians and other prominent national leaders talk about. Elsewhere, Hispanics face a variety of problems that aren't necessarily present in my specific city, such as subconscious racism and discrimination against the Mexican culture. Hispanics all across the country are segregated from each other, unable to develop and strengthen the cultural ties they have with each other. The people in my community see these issues on the news and on social media, but for the most part, we do not experience any of this first-handedly. The fact that our city is relatively small allows everyone to have close-knit relationships with pretty much all of the citizens within the local community. Although Hispanics as a whole are a minority in the U.S, we don't feel as such where I live. Quite simply, we're a majority here.

Different people are raised under different values and traditions, and this results in communities that contrast with one another. Despite all of these things being true, I never really gave much thought to the fact that things weren't the same in other parts of the country, and I definitely didn't expect to suddenly become aware of this at a Drum Corps camp, of all places.

A couple of months ago, I went through an experience that made me realize just how important friendships are, especially in new social contexts. In April of this year, I attended my first weekend camp for the Drum Corps I will be marching with this summer (move-ins are July 1). For those that are not familiar with the marching arts, Drum Corps International (DCI) is basically a summer-based professional music league where people 21 and under are able to compete and travel across the country with different groups, called Drum Corps.

Before I attended camp in Abilene, TX (a whole nine hour drive from my city), I had never really consciously paid attention to the lack of Hispanics within the various DCI groups. I would always look at the guard videos that many Drum Corps posted on their social media to learn some new toss or another, but I was always focused on the content of the video, not the person being recorded. I didn't think about the fact that I wouldn't be surrounded by the large, supporting group of friends I was accustomed while I was away. My ignorance towards this and my lack of exposure to other cultures in general left me a little unprepared for the comical experience that would be my first DCI camp.

When I attended camp, I went with three other friends, all of us being Hispanic and fluent Spanish speakers. As we arrived at McMurry University, where the weekend camp was being hosted, it was as if my mind suddenly realized what had been in plain eye-sight the entire time. I looked around at everyone at the camp, and I became aware that my friends and I were surrounded by people that didn't speak a word of Spanish. We, of course, took advantage of this and talked trash about other people in Spanish so that they wouldn't understand what we were saying (joking, we didn't do that... or did we?). Ironically, for the first time in our lives, we actually felt the effects of what it feels like to be a minority... but here's the thing.

I didn't feel alone.

I wasn't anxious or scared like I normally would be if I was somewhere new by myself. I wasn't with the group of friends I was accustomed to, but I had my three guard friends, and that was all I needed to feel safe and welcome. I knew that whatever happened at camp, I could count on them to talk about the experience as we went through it together. In that moment, I began to truly appreciate having a group of people I could count on. I thought about my other friends back home, and I realized that I was very lucky to have such amazing people in my life.

That first night at camp, one of my friends, Katie, pulled out some "Picositas Belts" Mexican candy from her backpack and began to eat it. After seeing the candy, one of the guard girls from Northern Texas walked up to Katie and asked her something I will never forget: "Are those Takkis-flavored Twizzlers?" As you can imagine, my friends and I burst out laughing. We were cackling for a good five minutes, but eventually, Katie explained to her that the candy was not, in fact, "Takki-flavored Twizzlers." Laughing together with them made me feel giddy and happy, both emotions that I wouldn't have felt if they weren't there to share the experience with me.

One of the other things I realized during camp was the fact that a lot of people really do believe in the stereotypes surrounding Hispanic culture. After the whole Twizzlers incident happened, Katie went around offering people some of the candy, but almost no one wanted to try it. They all said something along the lines of, "Your tongue is used to spicy things. Mine isn't. I won't be able to handle it." One of the guard moms at camp—who very generously volunteered her entire weekend to cook for the Drum Corps during camp—even told me she was barely starting to put a few Jalapeño peppers in her food to spice it up a bit. I chuckled at this, but then I started thinking. Why is it that our love for spicy food became a stereotype while our passion for close-knit friendships and relationships with each other didn't?

As my train of thought took me away, I eventually found myself slightly annoyed at how other people perceived Hispanics. I thought about how this was the first time that I was completely surrounded by people that didn't live next to Mexico their entire lives. I looked over at Katie, finishing off the last of her candy, and I laughed. They weren't wrong. We Hispanics do eat spicy foods like it's second nature. I guess I never really thought about how different people can actually be.

The next day at camp, my friends and I talked about the food they fed us. It was certainly unlike anything we had ever had before. I'm not saying the food was bad. I actually really liked it. It was just different from what I'm used to. There was one specific plate they gave that caught my attention. I'm not sure what it was called, but it was a mixture of bread, chicken, and vegetables covered with some kind of creamy white sauce. It didn't really have much seasoning or salt, but it tasted really good, which is something that threw me off a bit. I can't speak for all Hispanics here, but my grandma pretty much raised me believing that "si no tiene sal, no sabe a nada (if it doesn't have salt, it doesn't taste like anything)." Tasting food that wasn't heavily seasoned or salted and actually enjoying it was a new one for me.

As I laid on my inflatable twin bed that second night, surrounded by the noisy guys I will be sleeping next to in a couple of weeks, I thought about my guard friends back home. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason, and if it wasn't for the friends that pushed me to join guard at the end of my freshman year, I wouldn't have been at Drum Corps camp that day. I thought back to the days when I was a shy performer and remembered how horrible my dance technique used to be.

Two years later, I still don’t know a thing about dance technique, but I know my Drum Corps’ Guard Caption Head will drill it into me like there’s no tomorrow. I can safely say I’m decent at spinning, though. I’ve definitely come a long way from the performer I was when I first started. In a matter of two years, the friendships I have built have helped me go from being a shy newbie to taking over as captain next year alongside Valerie, one of my closest friends.

All of this has honestly made me realize several important things about friendships. For one, having people you can count on wherever you go is something invaluable. A supporting group of friends gives you the courage you need to try new things and get out of your comfort zone. I'm honestly very excited about making new friends with the culturally-different people I'm going to be living with for three entire weeks. We all have a passion for performing, and I can't wait to get to spin with a group of people that love color guard just as much as I do. I leave in about two weeks, and just thinking about all of the memories and friendships I'm going to make makes me ecstatic beyond belief.

My guard, the Tiger Color Guard from Valley View High School (2017)

The culture shock I experienced was, in all honesty, somewhat mild. After all, I didn't travel very far. Despite this, though, I realized that the difference and diversity I went through at camp made me a little more knowledgeable. I first-handedly experienced what it's like to not be surrounded by people with your same background, and although it was a somewhat new feeling, I liked it. I had a new thirst in me to make new friendships with people I wasn't accustomed to. The contrast between the people I met at camp — they're all amazing people by the way, don't misinterpret what I wrote — and the people I know at home only resulted in a growing passion within me to attend a socially and ethnically diverse university in the hopes of expanding my social circle.

My parents think that I want to leave home and never come back, and in a way, I'm to blame for that. I haven't really done anything to show them otherwise. In all honesty, sometimes I consider actually doing just that. I know I won't, though. You see, I want to leave and study elsewhere to learn how to make my own community better. When you are surrounded by people of your same background, most of you will arrive at the same solution to a problem. Your experiences are, for the most part, very similar, so it makes sense to have similar logic. I believe this restricts an individual from developing different points of views to a problem, and to life in general.

That is why I want to leave. I want to study somewhere where I'm surrounded by people from all over the world so that I will gain a more holistic view on life. In doing so, I'll be able to better understand and react to everything that life throws at me. I'll learn from new friendships and thus become a better, more wholesome person. Once I have gained enough knowledge, I want to come back to where I grew up. I want to give back to my community and help people here learn and expand the way they think in the same way that I hope to expand mine.

I realize this seems like an absurd goal for someone that doesn’t even have a specific career in mind yet (my latest majors tend to lean towards Sociology and Contemporary Anthropology; who even knows what jobs those’ll get me?), and I’ll admit that I don’t know what paths I’ll take to achieve any of the things I just wrote about. These are just some realizations and observations I made during a camp, after all. I will continue making new friendships wherever I go, because a strong, supporting group of friends is, in my opinion, the key to anyone's success. All I know is that, wherever life takes me, I will try my best to live a fulfilling, happy life full of culture shock and amazing experiences. That’s all anyone can ask for, really.

Spread love and positivity,

– Ram

friendship
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About the Creator

Ramiro A. Hernandez

18 || STX || A resident of the Hispanic and mostly rural community of Hidalgo, TX. In love with many things, in hate with none.

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