What I Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know

I remember being annoyed as a kid when adults would say “god bless you.” It was fine if I sneezed. But even when I let out the smallest little cough, they would turn to me and say “gublessyou” just the same. Inevitably, I would then mumble “Thank you,” meaning “I’m not dying! Don’t bless me!” I got used to it some time in high school, when I realized that the quick succession of “coughsneeze-gublessyou-thankyou” made me a polite and respectful young lady. But I never liked it very much.

Here, I can have a sneeze attack in public and no one says anything. Best of all, if I let out a little cough, no one will ever, ever, bless me. I still reflexively brace for a “gublessyou” or “salud”, but it never comes and I am so happy for that.

I was advised endlessly about culture shock before I arrived in Chile, and was prepared for the worst – total disorientation and an intense longing for home. As it turned out, adjusting was easier than I expected. I have certainly experienced surprises and frustrations, but nothing like the “culture shock” I was warned about. In some aspects, like the beautiful post-sneeze silence, the culture here even suits me better.

My mother is Israeli, but I was born and raised in Boston. I grew up bilingual, and although I didn’t fully recognize it as such, bicultural. I call myself “American” (“half-Israeli” sounds weird), and yet I hold a distinct set of values, customs, and norms. In addition, I grew up without a television, and so I wasn’t encultured to the extent that my peers were via mass media. Israeli and Chilean cultures are not terribly similar but nevertheless, I am used to switching between languages and modes of being, and that ability has made the transition here smoother.

In my first blog post, I wondered about “what I don’t know that I don’t know”. One answer is this: my childhood was more deeply bicultural than I knew. As a result, the US feels more foreign to me than one would expect, and conversely Chile feels less foreign. I am supposedly immersed in the “other” and the “different”, but I sure feel currents of home.