Acculturated

That’s such a funny word. It makes me think of cheese. I know it’s weird, but isn’t cheese cultured? Speaking of cheese, Honduran cheese tastes a little funky. It’s kind of more sour tasting, but not in a bad way…it’s just different.

You’ll have to excuse my digression because, believe it or not, I didn’t choose this title because I wanted to talk about cheese. I picked it because that’s how I’m starting to feel. Acculturated. I had to look up the word because I wasn’t sure it was the exact one I wanted to use but when I read the definition (to have absorbed and assimilated the culture of another group of people or another person; to have changed somebody’s cultural behavior and thinking through contact with another culture) I decided it was definitely the right word for how I feel. Over the past couple of days I’ve been finding myself forgetting, I guess you could say, that I’m here in Honduras. It’s hard to describe. There’s this park right down the street from Amber’s house and a lot of mornings I’ll go sit and read on this bench there that has the most amazing view of the city. This morning I was sitting there and every time I looked up from my book I would look around and think “oh yeah, I’m in Honduras…I’d forgotten.” And now it’s becoming really easy to tell people apart, where as when I first got here everyone just looked “Honduran” and faces would kind of run together. It’s not weird that I’m not surrounded by a bunch of white people…in fact I think it will be kind of weird going back to the States, and even more at Lipscomb where that’s pretty much all there is lol. I don’t feel so weird about getting stared at by guys (which, by the way, is not a testament to how attractive you are, it’s purely related to the fact that you’re a girl and, as an added bonus, you’re white). I guess I don’t really notice it anymore. Just little things like that that I’ve been noticing and have made me think I’m just becoming “acculturated.” And in a good way, not like funky cheese.