It is clear that throughout my experiences here, I have gone into situations with at least a grain of a preconceived notion, or uncertainty about how to interact with Europeans.  For example, in my blog called, “My Own Review,” I was hanging out with an Italian guy and was very skeptical of how it might turn out, due to some of my own experiences and others that I’ve heard about.  “I wanted to trust him because he seemed so genuine, but all of the typical red flags were going up.  Once again, my mind reverted to my predetermined notions of European interaction.”  I wish I didn’t have such apprehensions. I guess it might keep me safe sometimes, but I also don’t want to sterotype the Italians or hold myself back from having fun.

This makes me realize that my “shadow” as mentioned in, “The Shadow Side of Everyday Life,” by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, might be that I’m more apprehensive than I thought. “It is that part of the unconscious that is complementary to the ego and represents those characteristics that the conscious personality does not wish to acknowledge and therefore neglects, forgets, and buries, only to discover them in uncomfortable confrontations with others.”  I wouldn’t necessarily say this was an uncomfortable confrontation with another person, but at the same time, it took me longer to open up than I would expect of myself.

The same pattern is apparent in my blog, “Miscommunication,” when I described that, “I almost immediately put this experience under a category in my mind of Europeans hating Americans.”  Due to my experience in France with having to win waiters over with my French before they would give a genuine smile, or at least not brush me off and walk away with an attitude, I categorized this interaction as the same with all Europeans.  This is actually really embarrassing for me because I think of myself as a culturally open person, but I guess I carry some of this in the back of my mind.

In the end, I’m developing this sense of letting go and not expecting anything from anyone until they can just prove who they are to me.  I’ve learned this in many ways this month, and I particularly feel like one of those moments was at the end of my experience with this waiter in the same blog.  “My attitude had changed and now my deep distrust of first impressions had grown even more.”  I realize I’m apprehensive but I have this very conscious hatred for first impressions and, as they say, judging a book by it’s cover.

I feel like I’m on my way and by the end of my blogs, with my latest, “I Am Working, Right?” I had no second guesses about the experience before going into it and I got to this level of comfort with these fantastic people, it was almost a Zen experience.  I lost myself that day.

This feeling reminded me of a passage in, “Voicing Identities Somewhere in the Midst of Two Worlds,” where the authors state that “They may resist conformity, cultural norms, and even feelings such as shame and guilt.”  This also relates to being comfortable in any situation, not just letting go of expectations for other people, which is key.  I realize that I can’t be nervous about coming across as “too American” or anything because I am American, and there are certain qualities developed through enculturation that I will always have.  I just have to trust that I can communicate as relatively as possible.