I personally define culture shock as the experience of a new culture different than you own, with what might be surprising customs, traditions, behaviors, etc. Culture shock can be hard for some people or exciting for others. Being in Ecuador, I haven’t actually experienced that much of culture shock. I have traveled in the past to other Latin American countries and Ecuador shares a lot of similarities with these countries. I have had a couple moments of culture shock which will be described below.(though culture shock seems like a very strong concept, with a slightly negative connotation for me).
The first thing that struck me and made me quite curious was that my host family always wear shoes in the house and are very insistent that I do as well. I am use to only wearing shock outside and it’s been hard for me to get used to I tried to some research about it, but nothing came up. Is it a cleanliness thing? Because my shoes seem a lot dirtier than my feet? Is it a health pre-caution? So as not to catch a cold or spread foot fungi? The mystery remains…
The next culture shock experience is the heavy amount of cat calls, whistles, and honks I get whenever I walk anywhere in town. This happens a fair bit in the United States as well, but there is just a lot more of it here and somehow it feels worse. I am very curious of the mentality around it here…Is it meant to be nice or complementary? Is it because I am white? Because I often walk around lost and confused, and hence vulnerable appearing? One particularly defining moment for me was when I was very lost and trying to get to my first day of volunteering. I started getting frustrated because I was late to where I needed to be, and I got more and more frustrated with the amount of cat calls I was receiving. I got so upset I started to cry, and surprisingly for me, this led to even more male attention. It just seemed so gross to me that guys were trying to hit on me more when I was crying and saying inappropriate things, that it was definitely a culture shock moment. Were they trying to cheer me up? Make me more upset? Did they have any intention at all or just said things without thinking about it? I am curious how Ecuadorian women think about cat calls and how they handle it. I had a hard time researching this as well.