My identity

My feelings as a L1 speaker

I feel pretty much comfortable with traditions, beliefs, costums, behaviors and some other aspects of Costa Rican culture, because I had grown in this culture. However, my knowledge is basically from the places where I have lived, like San José and Alajuela.

During my childhood I lived in San José. In 1990, at the age of eleven, my family moved to Alajuela. In this move, I experienced culture shock. Eventhough, Alajuela and San José are part of the same country, their inhabitants beliefs, costums and traditions are different. Also, many expressions and vocabulary is quite different.

For example, one day, in the new school, I asked a classmate to borrow me her pencil sharpener (I called it “tajador”) and she didn’t understand me. Inmediately, she asked, “what do you need?” I answered her, “I need something to sharpen my pencil” and she said, “Ah, you’re asking for a “maquinilla.” “Yes, that’s what I need,” I said. What I mentioned before, is just an example of a bunch of experiences I had with culture shock, although my family and I moved to a different province in the same country.

My feelings as a L2 speaker

I have never lived in an English speaking country but I have traveled to USA twice. During my trip I could observe many culture behaviors such as,

• ü Hot chocolate milk preparation
• ü Extreme security in most places
• ü Fast food prevails everywhere
• ü Coffee drinkers
• ü Well cleanup streets

These were things that I didn’t learn when studying English. I learned them when I was inmersed in that country for a couple of weeks. Now, I have to research for many other things about this culture to be able to transmite these data to my classmates. I still have to learn more things about USA.