on gender and greetings

I wrote this after my first week in San Ramón. I'm posting it now because I think it's interesting to think about different cultural greetings and how gender mixes with that. Things have improved, as I've gotten to know the people better and we've established our standard greetings, implicitly. But it's still something I think about and that is definitely not natural or comfortable for me.

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In Costa Rica, the greeting between two women or a man and a woman who know each other is a kiss on the cheek and a hug. Men get a handshake.

This custom was never explained to us, really, and I know that even if it had been, I would still be a little lost trying to navigate its uses.

In San José it didn’t really come up, except for the first awkward greeting at the airport with my family. But after that we weren’t really interacting with ticos outside of the admin and teachers at ACM. But here, in San Ramón, it’s a whole new ballgame.

I’m spending my time volunteering and doing a study on the Red Cross. So I go to the office each day and interview people and am getting to know the workers and read the equivalent of my EMT book in Spanish.

In the US when you (or I, at least) get comfortable in a place of work and know people, a standard greeting is a smile and “Good morning. How are you?” Here, though, from what I have gathered, it’s a “Buenos días, pura vida” combined with a cheek kiss and hug.

This just makes me uncomfortable. Firstly, it bothers me in the states when people hug when they literally saw each other 12 hours ago. Unnecessary. Secondly, I like my personal space, thank you. Thirdly, with the guys, I have no idea what kind of signals I’m sending.

The gender divide and relationships are different here, in a lot of ways that are hard for me to understand, as a foreigner. But I feel like if I go in for an enthusiastic cheek kiss, it would seem very forward of me. But maybe that’s just the reserved American in me? But then I think I come across as stand-off-ish when I don’t go for that, which makes them uncomfortable, which makes me more uncomfortable. What I really need is a female worker to go in five seconds before me so I can see how she would act. Or to not have different standards for men and women, but that’s a whole other battle.