part of my response paper 2

Jeanine Kohlbecker                                                                 September 25^th 2011

            Culture shock is feeling uncomfortable in a new surrounding or unfamiliar culture. In my lifetime I can only remember one time that I experienced culture shock. I was in my church youth group for all four years that I was in High School and we used to go to quarterly masses in different churches around the diocese. One of these churches we went to, I don’t remember the name of it, was a full Hispanic parish with Spanish speaking priests and parishioners. The mass was done in all Spanish and I didn’t understand most of it. I took a few years of Spanish in High School but I still couldn’t understand what was being said.

            I felt so out of place and uncomfortable because they were all speaking Spanish and not even taking into account that there were people in the crowd who didn’t understand Spanish and only speak English. The people were super nice and it was interesting and definitely a new learning experience but I wish they would have had a little more respect for us who didn’t understand Spanish and maybe added a few pieces in English. Although I couldn’t understand I could still follow along a little bit because I was an altar server for 8 years and have always been around the church so it was a little bit easier but I couldn’t respond because I didn’t know the words in Spanish.