Midtown Global Market

For my intercultural experience, I chose to visit the Midtown Global Market. I must admit that I went there for another project, but the two projects have very similar reasoning behind visiting a cultural event so I figured I could hit two birds with one stone! Each put me on the third step of the Staircase Model (conscious competence), we are actively seeking to understand other cultures in order to improve our intercultural communication competencies. The Midtown Global Market is an internationally-themed public market that has groceries, great food, and unique shops with gifts from various countries and cultures all over the world - sold by people who come from that culture, country or area of the world, as well as people who strongly identify with that specific culture. 

The outside of the building

The market itself is on the first floor of the building. It has has little shops and food stands from many cultures in somewhat of a cluster around the entire market.  These food stands consisted of traditional meals from countries such as Africa, Mexico, Thailand, other Asian countries, and Sweden (just to name a few). I tried bubble tea at a Chinese food stand, and as someone who has only had bubble tea once or twice before, I can't say how different it is from "normal" bubble tea but I thought it was interesting that it was more of a slushy than a tea. My friends and I also tried Pad Thai and egg rolls, Mexican coffee and coffee cake, Swedish treats, etc. There are many unique little shops with festive clothing, jewelry, artwork, significant items and instruments, toys, and basically anything else you can think of. 

For a brief background, the Midtown Global Market was formed when the City of Minneapolis was searching for something to do with the building (which I believe was the first Sears building). "Latino business owners and neighborhood groups from the Phillips, Central and Powderhorn Park neighborhoods helped convince City officials that the historic building should be saved and, ultimately,  reflect the ethnic diversity of the neighborhood and the entrepreneurial energy of the businesses on Lake Street" (MGM website). Four non-profit teams, The Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC), Neighborhood Development Center (NDC), African Development Center (ADC), and the Powderhorn Phillips Cultural Wellness Center (PPCWC), worked together alongside the City and other sponsors to come up with the idea of, and achieve, a "global market."

Me & a beautiful mirror mosaic woman 

in the entrance of the building

African shop  

Me & group member ordering bubble tea

Mexican Restaurant "La Salsa"

The purpose of visiting Midtown Global Market for my other project was to define and experience that "the world is bigger than you." When I think "the world is bigger than me," I think ethnorelativism. There are so many other things in the world that I am not aware of and not involved in, other cultures being one of those things, and in order to understand the world beyond ourselves we must communicate and see through universal contexts. So, we chose to experience how the world is bigger than us by immersing ourselves into various different cultures, which conveniently were all under one roof at the Midtown Global Market. It was amazing to see so many people from different cultures working under the same roof. I believe that each person involved or running each food stand/restaurant, gift/clothing/art shop, etc., are all involved to essentially achieve the same thing - bring awareness of and share their culture with others. This shows that they are proud of their culture and proud of where they come from and they want others to experience the things and foods that they love most about their culture.

Though I wasn't focusing on one particular culture, I interacted with salespeople and merchants from many different cultures and asked questions pertaining to the items being sold and the significance of the items to their culture - symbolic exchange. Each were welcoming and open to the questions we asked them and most seemed excited for the opportunity to share their stories and cultural perspectives; others seemed busy or unwilling to speak, which shows differences between flexible and inflexible communication. I noticed, however, that even though this place seemed very welcoming and open to outsiders, there were still noticeable differences between "in-groups" and "out-groups." Before this trip, I had never been to (or even heard of) the Midtown Global Market and I didn't know what to expect. I think I felt like more of an outsider, even though I may not have really been an outsider. This in itself may have been a bit of culture shock. Having so many different cultures around me all in one place was a big adjustment, but I loved every minute of it. We were lucky enough to end up visiting on "family night," so it was neat to see so many families coming together in one place. There was a classical/African band playing beautiful music, and children running and dancing all around the central area. To me, what I got from there being night designated to family shows that each culture involved in the Midtown Global Market values family and the importance of spending time with loved ones.

The band, children dancing & families enjoying music and dinner with one another. (It looks kind of dead, but this is just a bad camera angle - I was trying to fit everything into one shot, but it didn't work out so well.)

All in all, the Midtown Global Market is a great place to experience various cultures and it truly does encompass that "the world is bigger than you." This is an important thing to remember, similar to having an ethnorelative mindset, when it comes to intercultural communication, and something to keep in mind when studying abroad. We must seek to understand other cultures in order to be able to understand communication from other cultural frameworks.