Towards Cultural Awareness

New Orleans is so often characterized- a city of jazz and Mardi Gras. New Orleans is so often victimized- a city of poverty and Hurricane Katrina.

Over the last month of living in New Orleans, I haven't lived in THAT city: the one of extravagant parties and extraordinary pain.

But there's definitely a different culture here.

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I remember having to give a speech at a youth camp in Austria about the differences between US American culture and Austrian culture; sharing the differences between my mom's culture and my dad's culture.

Most of the differences seem pretty small, so the differences are kind of hard to explain. In Austria, school children take public transportation instead of having specific school buses, colleges and universities don't have exorbitant tuition rates, people regularly buy loaves of bread from the bakery instead of pre-sliced manufactured loaves, etc.

They all seem small and they're not all exclusive to one culture, but each thing adds up and gives the culture a different feel.

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I've had a similar experience in New Orleans.

-Here people describe location in reference to either the river or the lake.
-Snowballs are made with the finest shavings of ice that have oodles and oodles of syrupy goodness in more flavors that you can imagine.

-Each school is a charter school or religious school (except for 5 public schools left in the entire city) with uniforms, and they don't necessarily serve the local students in that neighborhood.
-Creole seasoning makes everything better.
-Most houses have balconies or porches and I see residents there just hanging out, enjoying life as I drive to and from work each day.
-Houses are pretty colorful (like our own Big Green House), many are propped on cinder blocks, and there's lots of Spanish style architecture; I've barely seen any brick houses at all.

-There's more than one way to cross the river. There's a river ferry that isn't just for tourists- it's for commuting locals too.
-Louisiana has an open container law, so it's more common to see people drinking alcohol out in public. You're more likely to get offered a beer or daiquiri at 10am than a bottle of water.
-There are lots of bike lanes and bike riders because in a city where not everyone can afford a car and public transportation is not super reliable, biking is often the most efficient and cost effective option.
-I have to drive with careful consideration of the potholes and sinkholes and figuring out where all the traffic cameras are.
-Each day I make at least 2 U-turns, not because I missed a turn, but because I simply am not allowed to go left.

The lane on the left is specifically only for U-turns

-Road medians are called "neutral grounds" and they are everywhere. People used to porch sit or have lawn parties on these grounds. At night, when there isn't enough street parking, this is where people park their cars (even though apparently that's only technically allowed during flooding).
-Favorite parks tend to depend on where someone lives: uptown folks like Audubon and downtown folks like City Park.
-Everyone has an opinion on where to get the best snowballs, poboys, and king cakes.
-People most anywhere will stop and chat with you for a bit, tell you about themselves, ask about your life, and help you out any way they can.

Yeah, there are festivals almost every weekend and Second Line dances and costume parties and horse-drawn carriage rides and jazz musicians everywhere and so many art walks. And yeah, there are houses that still haven't been fixed since Katrina and the majority of grade school students are on free or reduced lunch and there are high crime rates.

But those extremes aren't how I would describe my time living here. They aren't the parts of my day that bring me the most joy or the most sadness. It's the little things that define my days.

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I love noticing these little things because it means that I'm digging beneath the surface of this new place. I'm more than a tourist and I'm developing real cultural competency.

Particularly having been raised in two cultures, I place a high significance on cultural awareness. Being culturally fluent means laying aside ethnocentrism and learning other ways that people exist alongside each other and how others structure their society.

This doesn't mean that I know everything about New Orleans or am now an insider, but I get to continue reevaluating my own worldview and cultural existence based off of these new experiences and I find that invigorating.

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What are the little things that make up the culture of where you live?