Who am I?

Someone I have been, and continue to be - a person who likes to drink coffee on the terrace

I've been thinking about identity a lot during my move to Spain. Identity is a construct that was studied a lot in my field. Although I'm no expert, it is I can roughly describe it as the type of person you see yourself as. You construct this picture from how other people treat you, what arenas you are successful in, whether people in that group treat you as one of them, etc. Some of my identities are a white person, cisgender female, a physicist, a good cook, a cyclist, a person good with money, even a Trekkie.
I knew that moving to a new country would mess with some of those identities. For example, I think of myself as an intelligent person who is mostly good at navigating the practical components of life. When I arrived, I could barely speak, so no one else could see those smarts, and I had so many experiences, such as not understanding the bus system or not knowing how to get internet installed, that I felt like someone who didn't know how to adult. I also expected that my American identity would become far more salient, although that turns out to be not quite right - I'm not an American here, I'm simply a foreigner, in a group with many other people who can't communicate well and don't know how the system works. Plus, it turns out that many people think I'm French, even if they haven't heard my first name.

But other identity changes were completely unexpected. For example, I see myself as a navigator, since I'm always the person in the group with the map telling everyone where to go next. But here, I seem to have lost my sense of direction. I don't know if it's the multitude of non-parallel streets, or if it's because most street signs are either high up on building sides or non-existent, but I get lost about a hundred times more frequently than in other countries I have lived in. Similarly, I have always been a short, petite person. I didn't even think of this as something that could change, except if I gained weight. But suddenly, in Spain, I am almost of average height for a woman. I can see the tops of many people's heads! And because the Spanish are also very thin, I feel of average weight or maybe a little over. There's nothing wrong with being tall or short or skinny or fat, it's just that I hadn't realized how culturally constructed it would be.

All of these changes are less disorienting as the months roll by. I already feel better about my ability to navigate things like the bureaucracy or the Metro system, and someday I will feel as confident about the subjunctive case as I do about quantum mechanics.