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ore you are old enough to drink posted by christiane at 09 08 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday 19 april 2010 your intercultural future is starting right now moving in together and or getting engaged so you have found a partner from a different culture that you love and want to be with you have figured out which country you will both live in to make the relationship work you have met each others friends and possibly family and now you are ready for the next step in most of europe this next step would mean moving in together in the us it would more likely mean getting engaged even though we were in the us at the time we choose to first share an apartment to try out compatibility after a year and a half of long distance relationship our families viewed this step very differently my mother in law was hoping we would get married before we moved in together and my own mother was hoping we would try living together before we got married living together brings out a whole new set of cultural differences even for couples from the same culture moving together comes with many adjustments because you come from families with different routines and traditions most of our disagreements e g which direction to peel carrots or how to fold underwear weren t necessarily rooted in our cultural differences the fact that we were both hard working graduate students with little money was a bigger unifier than our cultures were a divider plus i had slowly adopted quite a few american habits how many really i am only realizing right now that i am back in europe two areas of cultural disagreement emerged quickly however food and holidays both of which will require an entire blog which will follow this one over the next couple of weeks after living together for about 2 years it became clear that we wanted to stay together and get married with this decision a whole different level of cultural challenges appeared first of all while becoming engaged is the traditional start of the american road to a wedding most germans of my generation do not get engaged anymore and if they do they don t make a big deal out of it when we got engaged we decided to have a picture taken by a friend and send out announcements to friends and family near and far little did we know that the generation of my parents in germany would see this announcement as a request to give a present how embarrassing and a nice example of cross cultural misunderstanding you have to know that getting engaged in america is the starting signal of a at least one year long preparation for the big day girls are indoctrinated from early on that the wedding day will be the culmination of their life when they will be the most beautiful and everything has to be perfect this image not only causes a bride lots of stress some of it positive some negative but requires a lot of money time and effort in order to know what you want on your wedding day you are expected to read bridal magazines go to bridal shows and decide even the smallest detail in order to create the perfect day i guess a lot of germans put the same effort into the first house that they build while most american s just buy one to start off with it doesn t matter whether you are twice divorced or just out of high school the announcement of an engagement is bound to produce screams of joy where ever you go followed by the immediate showing off of your ring finger i have to admit that i had become americanized enough by the time to look forward to and expect an engagement ring however i did not want the customary big honking diamond that sticks out like a crown in your finger too expensive and to impractical i imagined getting caught on things scratching along surfaces and really didn t want such a knuckle duster i had made sure that b knew about my preferences and we had been pseudo ring shopping a bit where i pointed out nice flat rings with sapphires in them when he proposed he had picked the ring i wanted flat with three oval sapphires and two small diamonds since it was just before christmas and i was flying home i was able to show the ring to friends and relatives in germany everybody was very impressed that i got a piece of jewelry for my engagement and admired the ring quite the opposite happened when i returned to the us the ring was so contrary to american expectations one big diamond that my showing of the ring was often met with an unsure look and quick glance to my face as in is she really happy with this ring should i congratulate or pity her you have to realize that the established american cultural expectation for a wedding ring is a stone worth two or three months salary of the man and anything less means he doesn t really love you that much this message is nurtured by jewelery store adds especially around valentine s day so the bigger the stone the greater the love theoretically so just imagine my ring in their expectant eyes it didn t help my case that at the same time another girl in my department also got engaged with a traditional american big rock ring so often when i told people that i got engaged they said oww show me the ring and not only did just my little sapphires come out but from the back came an i got engaged too scream and the hand with the honking diamond was shoved over mine it sure made it difficult for people to say something positive about my unusual ring in the face of cultural perfection posted by christiane at 04 25 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 30 march 2010 in laws relationships difficult to begin with challenging if cross cultural dating a person from another culture is always an adventure your differences make it more exciting but sometimes also more complicated start with the concept of dating itself in most european countries there is no such thing as an american date where a boy and a girl go out together for one night to do an activity most often dinner and or a movie but also dancing bowling etc the idea behind this being a test driving how compatible you are while b having a defined end to the activity so that if you don t like the person you can get rid of them after 2h without either of you losing face in europe you would not sign up to go out alone with a person you don t even know you would either have known them from group activities friends parties or met them by coincidence e g in a bar and then decide to spend the evening with them thus you already know that you like them and this activity alone together without the buffer of friends already marks the first step towards becoming a couple there is no such thing as a european girl boy having multiple dates with multiple people in one week some of which they know in advance they might not like but want to test with the american date comes a set of cultural rules that are not entirely strict but apply in the majority of cases a the guy asks the girl b since he asked the guy pays for the activity c often the guy picks up and drops off the girl especially if she still lives at her parent s house and they want to have a good look at him d if you liked the date you don t immediately ask for another but you have to wait a day or three and them make contact again e one or two dates with one person does not mean that you are exclusive and it is totally acceptable to go on a date with somebody else in between at some point and i myself am not entirely sure when how that happens most often the whole date procedure is dropped in favor of being exclusive and a couple but i digress what i really wanted to write about is when you have overcome the differences in dating you declared yourself together and things are getting serious you are often faced with the prospect of meeting the in laws if you are in the same country this could be sooner if you are far apart this could be maybe not until wedding plans are made i was still in the this is just part of the foreign experience mode when my new american boyfriend took me to his parent s house for the first time about 2h away from the university town it was thanksgiving a holiday we didn t celebrate in germany so i was eager to go and experience it on the way there in the car i asked him whether anybody else had ever brought a girl to the thanksgiving dinner and he assured me that many of his cousins had so what happened to them i asked oh they are all married now that freaked me out quite a bit parental expectations are hard enough to deal with but when you have a culture and or language barrier in addition you start walking on eggshells i think this first thanksgiving encounter went quite well but i am also sure that i did or said odd things in the eyes of the american family i m not sure how often i offended my american future mother in law unintentionally with my german directness or simple cultural mishaps in those first months and possibly still today but i m sure know it was often and my poor boyfriend husband was stuck in the middle trying to negotiate misunderstandings realizing where both sides were coming from but not necessarily knowing how to resolve things when he came to visit me in germany for the first time about a year later for christmas since i by then had returned to finish my exams he was exhausted from his first semester of graduate school and out of whack with his sleeping patterns due to his first jet lag i remember sitting at the breakfast table my family waiting for him to show up punctuality is a very big deal for germans we had waited for a while already so i went to check on him again and he had fallen back asleep i was embarrassed in front of my parents and i knew they were wondering what kind of listless slacker i had brought home thankfully that impression changed at some point and despite him not speaking any german in the beginning they somehow found a common ground mothers in law are generally a touchy relationship but when an american friend of mine got married in germany she got a good dose of mil plus german frankness all americans believe that a woman is most beautiful on her wedding day just a italians find a woman with a baby on her hip most perfect so when my friend put on her wedding dress and her american mother and friends were oohing and ahhing over it she turned to her mil and asked her opinion and the woman shot back with german honesty i don t think the cut is the best for you and i would take off that bow in the back stunned silence followed from the american side a father of a friend who is norwegian always told the story of his first kaffeetrinken with his future german in laws while the germans tend to say thank you as in no thank you the norwegians say thank you as in yes thank you so after his first cup of coffee and piece of cake he was offered more several times kept saying thank you and then didn t receive anything but since he wanted to make a good impression he kept quiet and hungry and thirsty as a general rule i would say in laws become even scarier when they speak another language or come from a different culture especially since sons and daughters in law can be scrutinized for faux pas that aren t even existing in their respective culture just think of greetings table manners or dress code and never mind wedding ceremonies or child rearing later on do you have a culture clash with your in laws to add posted by christiane at 06 23 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 23 march 2010 intercultural relationships the lure of the unknown if you are raising bilingual children chances are you are either in an intercultural marriage or living in a foreign country or even both so before children usually comes courtship so my next round of blogs will be about intercultural relationships so imagine you are a young man or woman about to embark on an adventure in a foreign country new language new environment new customs new people new love while being at university i have seen hoards of fellow students go on a study abroad program spend a semester or a year in a foreign country and in addition to improving their language and experiencing something new they also fell in love most become enchanted by the new way of living and the new language and what better way to experience this different life to the fullest than embracing somebody that embodies all that is new and exciting after all the best way to learn a new language is to sleep with your dictionary many people that go to live in a foreign country be it as a student in the military or on a business assignment feel lonely at some point and nothing soothes a lonely heart better love a new relationship is a great solution when you are single however causes problems if you have left a partner at home at least among the student population not many relationships survived one partner s stint in a foreign country this is not to say that it is impossible to survive a longer separation but you need to work on it not only will you have to keep your partner up to date with new experiences the s he can t share but they have to be secure enough not to succumb to jealousy be it for the new experiences themselves or towards the people that you now spend a lot of time with the lure of the new combined with an exotic setting is hard to resist at the same time this spell often quickly gets shattered when you return home you are faced with the choice of a long distance relationship or frequent visits in the short term and one of you moving in the long run since your feelings have often been intermingled with the experience of the other country and culture importing your new partner in your old environment is often a sobering experience your partner now a foreigner him herself is pushed out of their comfort zone and appears clumsy all of a sudden where there was self confidence before trying to keep a romance alive that depended on the thrill of the unusual while living back in the ordinary is hard my friend s added a second year to her stay in order to extend her romance but in the end to no avail another friend had a fling abroad but returned to her old boyfriend once at home again i was well aware of this very likely outcome of foreign romances when i embarked on my exchange year at the same time i was young and single and wanted to experience life to the fullest so it happened to me i fell in love but i wasn t going to make that obvious mistake so when another girl showed interest in the boy i started flirting with i told her she could have him back after my year in the us was up i was just wanting a fling little did i know i would end up marrying that fling posted by christiane at 07 30 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest older posts home subscribe to posts atom search this blog my other blog raising a child with asperger s syndrom transitional thoughts subscribe to posts atom posts all comments 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