Culturally Defined?

I am not nearly as culturally diverse as many kids are on the U of M campus, but when I was 11 years old, my family moved the the Sierra Madres mountains of Mexico to do aid work with the Tarahumaran Indians. I stayed there for two years, and, since I knew no spanish before we moved, I was home-schooled for two years.

Those two years probably defined more of me than any other time period of my preteen life. You don't move to an unknown culture with an unknown language where you are the only white kid in the city (and, the only kids who speak your language are your 4 sisters) without being strongly affected one way or another.

Coming back from Mexico as a 13-year-old, the American culture seemed much different than I remembered it. Way faster paced, way less family-centered, a much higher standard of living (unnecessarily, I thought at the time), and certainly more materialistic. What took me a while to realize, however, was that the American culture hadn't changed - I had. The Mexicans in the city of Creel (the city where our family lived) vastly differed the American culture on all of those points. I disliked American culture very much immediately upon returning to the U.S. I wasn't prepared for it at all. Over time, I learned to exist in the American culture, but some of those differences have stuck with me. I hardly ever play video games or watch TV. I rarely buy brand new clothes (not that I can't afford it, but I just don't think the clothes are worth it), and I know next to nothing about current pop culture. Again, I just don't see those things as worthwhile at all anymore. With respect to those areas of life, I have found myself drifting back to the Creel culture, where TV, video games, new clothing, and pop culture just were not considered valuable or even entertaining. Those two years gave me a completely different view of American culture that I probably would never have seen otherwise.