Blog Day 6

---

Looking Inward

To finish off our week in Granada, we used our free day to go to one of the biggest malls in Europe, the Sierra Nevada. It was definitely the biggest mall I’ve ever been to and even though it wasn’t necessarily a “culturally rich” experience, it was good to go shopping at Spanish stores that weren’t small shops and look for real clothes that weren’t the standard American look. Of course, a part of the process of buying clothes, especially in Europe, is trying them on. While other people in the group were trying on clothes, the rest of us would sit down outside the changing room and they would come out and we would all tell them what we thought of the outfit. Though this “event” may seem small and normal, it is not something that I ever really get to do with people because I rarely go shopping. This taught me that something that I really enjoy doing is hyping people up and complimenting them on things that they think completely different about. There were times that someone thought something looked bad, but it did not at all, and they just needed someone to tell them a different perspective.

The Relational Level

The prior mentioned shopping trip also helped improve my relationships with the friends I hang out with from the group. The experience of telling your friends your honest opinion of what they are wearing and how they look in it really builds trust between a group of people. It is not only nice to know when something looks good and nice to tell someone it looks good, but it also is helpful to know when to be honest with someone and learn to give them honesty even if it is negative. This is even how the Spanish communicate as well. Talked about on pages 61-62 in Culture Smart, Spaniards are very direct and blunt and will tell you straight up how something is. Of course, in the mall we tried to be as kind as possible about it but it was certainly different seeing what it was like to participate in that piece of the culture in a safe space with trusted friends.

The Social Side

Finally, the mall really taught me a lot about Spanish culture and something I had never really thought about, Americanization of the culture. Americanization is defined as the influence of American cultures on something whether it be business, food, or any other aspect of one’s other culture. The Sierra Nevada was very clearly adapted to American culture and looked as though it could have been located in the United States somewhere. The whole mall appeared very new and upkept and was a direct monument of a way that America has influenced Spain. While malls in America are dying out and being replaced with online shopping, commercialized locations like these are thriving in Spain and becoming very popular places for both tourists and some locals. On page 66 of Insight Guides: Spain, the author makes the note that a lot of this Americanization started occurring around the 1990’s when Spain hosted the Olympic Games in Barcelona and revealed to the world a much more modern culture than expected. Since then, they have continued to adopt certain aspects of American culture, an example of which was the Sierra Nevada Mall.

---