Smiling at strangers, by Shea Geary

As I entered Seville in early September with a bus full of American students our program director spoke with us about some cultural norms we may very soon become aware of. These norms included things such as eating times and wearing shoes in our homestay when were are not in our rooms which are two that seemed easy enough to adjust to, but then she began talking about some of the norms of body language we may face, especially in social settings such as at restaurants/bars. The director said that something she loves about our American culture is how much we smile, on the streets, at strangers, in our daily life overall, but she said we needed to be aware of how smiling can be interpreted differently in Spain because it is less common to smile at a stranger and we had to be careful to not give someone “the wrong idea.” This came as a huge surprise to me especially because I already knew Spanish culture was overall much more affectionate than American culture, I assumed smiling fell into that same category.  As I walked around Seville during my first weeks abroad I noticed a huge lack of people smiling at strangers. I may be an especially friendly person in that I will often smile at someone on the street even when I don't know them. Of course there is no right and wrong way to act around strangers, I simply have found that in Seville it is different, people are more likely to hug or kiss when they greet each rather than smile. This is a piece of culture they may be affecting me because it is clear that I am not Spanish, resulting in people being less friendly. This is an observation that myself and many of my peers have made and find to be a big difference from what we are used to experiencing at home. I also have noticed that not smiling doesn't mean someone feels negatively towards you, it just means they don’t feel strongly enough to smile.