An experience of cultural confrontation that has happened so far during my time abroad has been when I first made some local friends. One friend, in particular, spoke no English. This was an interesting challenge to tackle, as I do not speak enough Italian to converse properly. The first night we met, I was with a group of people and we all were confused on how to approach the situation because many of them have never had a conversation with someone who does not speak any English whatsoever. This was an interesting cultural confrontation I experienced with my group of peers. The way we tackled it was by using what little Italian that we were being taught in Italian 101 class. This ended up working out pretty well, as we all could converse enough to get to know each other. Past this, we all found that he had similar humor to us and we related to each other via showing each other videos we found to be funny on our phones. Obviously, there is difficulty in getting to know a local who only speaks Italian past the surface level, but at least we made an Italian friend. From this situation we learned to be more open to people of other cultures, who cannot speak any English and come to a mutual understanding through the use of technology and information that we can mutually understand. Overall, we remained friends and hang out frequently now! I am happy to have faced this cultural confrontation that was a bit challenging. I am learning Italian and he is learning English.
