Intercultural supplement

This year for my work experince I went to Madrid for 3 months working in a design firm with a contract of 5 h per day.

Before going to Spain I had some established stereotypes. Madrid is a capital, and for me like Paris I was expected a cold and expensive town. But Madrid is a warm town and people there have nothing to see from the parisian atmosphere we know. They speak to each other in the metro smiling and there’ s not the sensation of indiference.

Spanish culture is very extrovert, during three months there I noticed a lot of diferences with french culture. I tried to apply the ODIE notion, for example:

Example 1 :

Description : Raquel ( in charge of communication) was used to shout out through the firm speaking, laughing with some friends
Interpretation : She’s very communicative..but too much for me
Evaluation : I thought at first her behaviour wasn’t profesional

At the end of three months there , I was used to hear her shouting like that , like everybody and I just thought ‘ so she’s like that’!

Example 2 :

Desciption : Manolo, my italian roomate, calling his family at 11pm and speaking aloud !
Interpretation : ..At 11pm, it’s not an hour to call the family, and moreover shouting out when I try to rest
Evaluation : it was at the beginning of my first month and I thought he didn’t respect the rules of living together.

Example 3 :

Desciption : people queueing up for the bus
Interepretation : In france, in Paris it doesn’t happen.
Evaluation : spanish people is very disciplined!

In Spain, the non verbal communication is a notion very present. The proxemics notion is very diferent because people speaks to you closer and the notion of distance is not the same. People can be sometimes face to face to speak with the touch language ( haptics) very pronounced. They use hands and arms for everything, for say ‘hello’, ‘bye’, to explain better the discussion we have. It’s an extrovert culture,