By Elena Venegoni
Studying abroad can feel like an endless and confusing series of negotiations. For every familiarity that helps you feel comfortable is the loss of opportunity for something new. By choosing to study abroad, you are purposefully selecting to leave your comfort zone, but what really shapes your experience are the smaller choices you make every day. In my time abroad, the question that came up time and time again was how, and especially with whom, should I spend my time?
I studied abroad with the IFSA Mérida, Mexico Universities program, a hybrid program that acted as the intermediary between the local universities and the U.S. students. What this means is that I did orientation and certain programming with other students studying abroad, then took the majority of my classes with local students. My friendships with other students in my program came fairly quickly. A lot of us were in the same boat with starting from scratch in a new country in a different language. It felt comfortable to text them to hang out in our native language, easily make cultural references, and participate in familiar activities and games. In many ways I am grateful for this familiarity and friendship, as it helped to feel less alone and scared in a sometimes-scary time where, in many ways, I was alone.
Friendships with people not in my program often took a little more work. I had to be more vulnerable in putting myself out there, knowing that my Spanish was full of mistakes and that most of my classmates already knew each other. It was hard saying yes to invitations, or asking to join in on things, knowing full well it was going to be awkward and challenging. I didn’t immediately and innately understand norms surrounding inviting people over into my host family’s home, or being invited into their spaces. I couldn’t always tell when it was polite to refuse something versus when it was rude to. Mexican sayings and slang had to be explained to me, and a friendship almost ended when I misheard and misunderstood what a friend of mine said to me in a noisy bar. Once past this initial difficulty though, I found that friendships abroad, much like friendships at Tulane, build upon momentum and become more natural over time. I started playing ping-pong in the cafeteria with some other students after class, who welcomed me and ended up becoming good friends of mine. I found that, for the most part, the other students really wanted to be my friends! Socializing before and after class was a less intimidating way of getting to know some of my peers, and once I was comfortable it was easier to make plans outside of school.
One of my best experiences abroad was playing on a local Ultimate Frisbee team. A friend from my program and I reached out to the university coach who ended up inviting us to play with one of his teams. The community of my team connected me to the larger community of frisbee in Mérida, which introduced me to many of my friends and took up a nice chunk of my time. Joining this team was a definite step out of my comfort zone, and I think having another exchange student by my side helped make it seem less daunting. We were able to provide each other with enough familiar comfort that it felt safer to lean into the discomfort, while still being in the cultural minority and having to adjust accordingly.
That’s where the danger lies in relying too heavily on friends from your same culture. While you may be in the cultural minority of your host country or city as a whole, if you spend all of your time surrounded by people from a similar background, you don’t actually have to experience this phenomenon the same way. People from the U.S. often demand that people adjust their standards, customs and cultures to our values and norms as a country. Studying abroad with the mentality that people should accommodate to you, instead of the other way around, is not only disrespectful, but also robs you of truly getting to know the host culture. In my time in Mexico, it was challenging to live in the 100+ degree heat without the A.C. I was accustomed to in my home or classroom. However, instead of pushing away my peers and host family by making demands, I took the opportunity to learn about the history and culture of how Yucatecan people have endured the heat for centuries. My host mom explained how it’s the norm to sleep in woven hammocks during the hottest months and helped me put up one in my room. By the end of the semester, I preferred sleeping in the hammock and rarely used the bed.
That being said, some of your goals for your time abroad may align better with some of your peers who are also only there for a limited time. For instance, traveling for shorter periods of time, such as on weekends, was a lot less urgent, and in some instances less feasible, to my local friends. As a result, I did most of my traveling with other students in my program, who were in a similar situation, and got to enjoy that time with them.
Traveling with local friends, however, can also lead to unique and highly rewarding experiences. One of my favorite trips was a weekend I spent at my friend’s home in Bacalar, a beautiful town on an astoundingly blue lagoon. A friend I had made at UADY (the university) invited me and two of our friends to go home with him for the weekend. I got to meet and stay with his family, and was shown around by someone who grew up there. It felt really special to see it with him, and I feel like I got a deeper understanding of not only the place, but my friend.
The end of my semester culminated in the people from my program throwing a big going-away pool party where we all invited our local friends. This was an awesome conclusion to the semester where I was surrounded by all the people I cared about. Balancing your time and your friendships is a tricky part of a semester abroad, and there is no one right way to do it. By no means should you completely isolate yourself from friends of the same background as you; the more connection and support you have during this time, the better. I would urge you, however, to not shy away from discomfort, as my most impactful experiences with friendship abroad didn’t come the easy way.
