No such thing as silence by Michaela Pringle

Something that I noticed on my very first night at dinner with my host family after I had spent over 24 hours traveling and had arrived at my host house, my host mother was bothered the first moment there was silence. She muttered "silencio" the first second that we all stopped talking, even though at the time my roommate and I were new to learning Spanish and doing the best that we could. This is a huge cultural difference between the United States and Spain. In America if you can sit in a room with a person be comfortable with silence, it is seen as a measure of being comfortable with the person. In Spain, people enjoy carrying on conversation at all times of being together and attend many social scenes to be involved in conversation. They stay at restaurants longer than normal just to engage in conversation, while in America it is typical to leave when you are done your meal. I enjoy this aspect of the Spanish culture because some of my best times with my friends here have been sitting together and talking over tapas and drinks, and this seems like it should be normal human behavior. Silence and alone time is a very cherished concept in the United States and this difference between Spain and the United States has been made clear to me since the very beginning of my study abroad journey