That time I… broke out of my cultural comfort zone

Summers in Indiana are filled with lazy pool days and lemonade. They’re filled with barbeques and corn on the cob. But, for junior Cendy Trejo, the summer was spent far from the walls of Perry Meridian High school.
Trejo spent her summer in a summer immersion program, the Indiana University Honors Program in Foreign Languages, through which she travelled to France for a month and a half. This program is designed to fully immerse students learning a particular language in the culture of a native-speaking country.
“If you did the program right, for the month and a half you’re there, you wouldn’t have spoken a word of English,” Trejo says.
Students stay with host families “to better acquire an understanding of the culture there,” according to Trejo.
She travelled to Brest, France, where she stayed with a family of five, which included two host sisters and a host brother. “We were integrated into a host family,” she says, “and they matched our host family to us.”
Trejo, along with a group of other Indiana students, went on regular excursions on the weekends. They visited many historic and natural sites, such as Jardin de l’Académie de Marine, a garden in Brest, and Pointe de Pen-Hir, a cliff leading into seas bordering the Crozon peninsula.
At Locranon, a small village, Trejo had the opportunity to learn about the ancient culture present there. Participants learned to make a traditional bread common in the diets of Brest residents.
Through her exploration of the culture, Trejo learned about the differences between American and French culture. “It was very different from Americans,” she says. “Sometimes we ate dinner at 10.” The diet, in addition to the unfamiliar meal times, also contrasted largely from those in America.
This change agreed with Trejo.
“The food is so much better,” she says. “It’s all much more natural.”
“You gain a lot of independence from this program,” she says, since a large majority of her exploration of her hometown was done largely independently, in between her daily classes and curfew. “It gives you a sort of responsibility, too, you’re not a kid anymore, you’re an adult.”
She didn’t know any of her fellow travellers at the beginning of the program. “At first, I was very lonely,” says Trejo. “You don’t feel confident because you can’t express your emotions to anyone your own age.” After the first group activity, however, she became more comfortable. “When you made friendships, that is when it started becoming fun because you have friends to go through the experience with you.”
When Trejo returned home, she began to realize how accustomed to the French lifestyle she had become. “I forgot English,” she says. As she went through customs on her way back into America, a worker asked what she brought home. However, she could no longer remember the word for jam, and instead said, “That thing you put on bread.”
Through her experience, Trejo immersed herself in the vast world of France. “France is so diverse,” she says. “It made me aware of how vastly unique and different the world is.”