People Share Culture Shock Experiences - AskReddit

when i wasn't the top student anymore i was still in the top ten my father told me he was ashamed of me what's the biggest culture shock you ever experienced i grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood lot of rough stuff going on there but we won't discuss all of it suffice it to say even at a fairly young age i was pretty sure i'd seen some things in middle school i made friends with a kid that lived in the trailer park across town the trailer park kids are a whole different type of poor i remember the kid i was friends with as soon as i got there goes let's go to the creek darius got his fishing pole back okay whatever the hell that means so we go down to the creek and there's this kid darius and he's fishing in a creek and there are about 12 kids standing around watching him every so often he's catching a fish and handing it to one of the kids and the kid is taking the fish and running off giddy as hell he finally catches one and hands it to my friend he and i skip off back to his trailer my friend takes the fish as is puts it in the microwave and then when the microwave beeps he takes it out and starts eating it with a fork i almost puked rock concerts in japan you have a number on your ticket and everyone queues according to that number yes they managed to queue of hundreds of people in front of a venue according to the order in which they bought their ticket it's fair if you buy your ticket early you can get the chance for a better spot and you have a chance to buy limited merchandise that is usually sold out after minutes when the venue opens they call out every number and as soon as yours is called out you can go in they do that every time they do that at small venues with 20 people waiting and they do that at festivals another thing even after two days of festival the venue is clean as hell not one water bottle not one wrapping paper or anything i was at summer sonic fuji rock and osaka met rock and it was clean everywhere when a large maori man asked to touch noses with me and greeting the dude looked pissed until i manned up and was the first to touch noses then he had one of the best smiles i've ever seen on a mountain of a man it lit up the entire cultural center weirdly enough i was returning to america after spending years abroad in albania as mentioned elsewhere in this thread albania didn't have any international food chains or restaurants everything was local and usually tasted great i think what it was for me was when i was going to albania i psyched myself up i knew i was going to a foreign country and that things would be different and they were most stores were no bigger than the size of my bedroom back home open air street markets were common and roadside shops were everywhere most people didn't own vehicles and walked or relied on public transportation but when i returned to america i was just going home and didn't really think about it much but after several years it was weird the day after returning home we went to a costco walking around that place on that day was one of the most surreal experiences of my life packages of food were huge and there was just so much of everything we drove our cars everywhere and i realized my little hometown doesn't even have a proper bus system that was easily my biggest culture shock and it was about my own watching children in mexico happily eating crickets like they were popcorn also four or five-year-old kids out at 10 p.m to sell gum someone replied who thinks insects can be a major source of solving worldwide hunger crises it makes sense to be fair they have no bones need little prep apparently roasting locusts and adding honey is amazing and spawn breed based on degree days so they grow quickly a lot and potentially year round i had a french friend who told me chocolate covered ants are a tasty treat i was never sure how serious they were holidaying in tokyo and watching five-year-old kids walk themselves home from school and catching public transport all by themselves homogeneous group with respect for each other instilled to them at a young age they teach their kids to put the needs of the many above their own i've been to japan a bunch of times and it's really something to behold going to the usa and seeing that the water in the toilets is so full how the hell am i meant to poop without getting my butt wet also new york city taxis will blare their horns at anything pedestrians still on the crossing two seconds after the light goes green honk car in front of you gently breaks honk bird in the road honk be in the car honk the street lights turn on honk they're super aggressive drivers when i was a kid one of my mother's friends was a woman from a very tough background who had left her husband because he used to hit her and her children she had three kids and was living in a two-bedroom council flat in a tough part of glasgow my mom met her because they were both doing part-time university degrees as mature students she was studying to get a teaching qualification i became friends with one of this woman's kids when i was about six or seven i'd go over to his house for the night sometimes and we generally wander around the local neighborhood just doing what kids do he always carried a rucksack and was always on the lookout for empty glass soda and alcohol bottles if he saw one he'd grab it and stick it in the rucksack after a while i started bringing a rucksack along when i visited so we could double up on glass bottle carrying capacity the reason he did this was that in glasgow back then a sort of prote recycling scheme meant that every one of those bottles was redeemable for 5p at any shop that sold them they'd collect them give out five peeper bottle send them off to be recycled and be reimbursed for their time by the local government we'd collect a bunch of these then when we went back to the flat in the afternoon my friend would proudly hand over a few quid and coins to his mother he used to do this constantly and it meant this being the 1980s a decent little earner to help pay for a bit of the household expenses and so on i came from a family with a detached house in the suburbs that had two cars two parents two nice holidays a year and no real worries when it came to money not rich just lucky to be standard middle class meanwhile this woman was raising three children by herself while studying to become a teacher in a tiny little damp flat in a bad part of town she never asked her son to do what he did he just took it upon himself age seven or whatever to go out and do it it took me a while to understand what was happening but once i did i can honestly say it was one of the defining events of my life not sure if it counts as a shock as much as a slow realization because i've been going there all my life but once i got to about 15 and visited italy i started getting asked out by guys who just wouldn't take no for an answer you reject a guy in the uk and they'll normally take it well unless they're a bit unhinged but in italy i said no to strangers friends i'd known for years people i'd met that night all people who were otherwise normal who'd be so persistent that i had to either leave or use my cousin as a fake boyfriend i set up an ice candle lit dinner at home for my girlfriend once in the middle of dinner she drops the candles remind her of extremely poor family who had to ration their candles into minutes and they had to multitask to conserve light you had to do your homework all at the same time because the candles only lasted so long still tears me up i grew up in a working class city where passive aggression wasn't a thing if people didn't like you they made it obvious shouting matches and fist fights were pretty common then i get a job at a snooty ivy league university and nobody expresses what they actually think or feel snide remarks replaced insults people quietly conspire against you while pretending to be your friend and you can't call people out on their bs without getting socially sean because everybody is neck deep swimming in it so i'm norwegian but i went to new zealand for a year the culture shock for me was how open kiwis talk and how there's no such thing as stranger danger and as a typical norwegian introvert it took a while to get used to i'd meet a stranger and they'd be breaking the touching barrier right away and start talking about their cousin's rash and all their weekend plans even bigger shock returning to silent norway at 21 i encountered people who took the bible as a history book including the creation in six days blew my mind i was raised a catholic and we always were told that the bible contained moral stories passed over through time i was born in hawaii and lived on the big island until i was six little me was used to wearing flip-flops or no shoes and light weight dresses swimsuits and shorts and a t-shirt everywhere it was too hot for anything else or it would just get dirty cut to my family moving to ontario canada about three hours north of toronto my dad was working in the vacation business so we moved to an actual ski resort for the first few months my sister and i were enrolled in catholic school and suddenly i had to wear clothes but not just clothes stockings jumpers shirts with too many buttons and shoes that had to shine coats hats gloves different shoes to wear outside six-year-old me could not comprehend any of this we even had to change for gym and then change back my mom helped me put my stockings on in the mornings but after gym i would have to put them on by myself one day my teacher called my mom to come get me because i decided to start some sort of anti-clothing revolution and was jumping around the changing room in my underwear with my stockings on my head that nudity was such a big issue in the u.s coming from europe i undressed to got into my swim trunks all a matter of a few seconds in the changing room and everyone looked at me like i had just murdered a kitten once you get into the changing room there will be small stalls for single person used to change in they started installing these all over the place about 10 to 15 years ago there are also walls separating each urinal in most bathrooms when i lived in europe communist poland for six months you would see kids younger than 10 years old swimming naked in public pools in the usa they would arrest the parents for such acts it was also common to see tannin up swimming in just underwear also not acceptable here you have to wear swimming trunks i was born and raised in peru but left for the us in my early 20s despite things being far from rosy at the beginning i was mostly pleasantly shocked drivers would stop for me if i was coming close to a street corner kids 18 years old were getting their own places with a friend or girlfriend weed smoking was so commonplace i could make in an hour of fast food work what i would in a day back at the old birthplace people were generally nice and polite and they smile more often to strangers also two two-inch bulletproof glass at the counter at a kfc in pennsylvania and they gave you your food via revolving tray window move down to florida and domain all that open space and beautiful houses everyone has a car my family could never afford one growing up so i didn't even know how to drive supermarkets were fancy and no one asks you to show your receipt when you are leaving just in case you are stealing something got a job a golf resort bus or at a nice brunch place so much food my typical breakfast was two pieces of bread with margarine spread and instant coffee scrambled eggs were like for sundays these rich people be having mimosas and eggs benedict pancakes the size of dinner plates with chocolate chips is this narnia bathrooms in fancy hotels i would often start redesigning the place in my mind to turn it into my room back at the beginning i was just fascinated with walmart everything in the known universe is available and often stuff and brands i considered rather in the luxury category would be cheaper than they were in lima after 12 years i was recently forced to move back to peru i am convinced drivers are actually trying to kill me everything is fenced and i can't get a job that would cover my room's rent plus food and transportation no one cleans after their dogs that one really bugs me the biggest shock of all is how much of an alien i feel like even worse than when i first moved to the us sure makes me appreciate my time there a lot more marrying into my wife's mexican american native american family i come from a small white family my wife's family is huge at our wedding i had 15 people attend which was nearly my entire family she had 200 people attend which is only a small fraction of her family those that didn't get invited were quite grumpy about not getting invited when i first met her extended family i was overwhelmed there was like 50 to 60 people at her grandma's house on christmas some of her uncles didn't like how quiet i was being and started telling my wife girlfriend at the time how she needed to be careful of the quiet ones and several of them took me aside to threaten me then of course i made a major faux pas i refused food from her grandma i've since learned that it would have been better to just slap her in the face it took me 10 years to undo that damage i didn't win over her last uncle until i got absolutely tanked at his daughter's wedding reception at which point he decided i wasn't just a stuffy white guy once my wife coached me on her culture i was able to fit in better asking for food allowing the women to serve me and clean up after me taking plates home when i leave being more outgoing etc now grandma calls me miho and introduces me to everyone as her grandson which earns her a lot of confused looks since her grandma has accepted me everyone else has too and according to my in-laws i'm mexican now all in all would do again but it would have been nice to know that what's rude on the white side of my family is endearing on my mexican side and vice versa my parents were the typical asian kind hard to please and difficult to impress when i graduated class valedictorian for sixth grade my mother complained that i did not receive any other award like best in science or best in math when i fell down the ranks of top students i was still in the top 10 though my father told me that the reason he stopped attending school events was because he was ashamed of me when my elder sister got pregnant a couple of months before graduating med school my mom stopped talking to her for a month they lived across the hall from each other unforgiving of failures that was the kind of parents that we had when my girlfriend took her licensure exam for accountancy for the first time she failed the test i was with her when she told her parents about it to this day i still remember the shock i felt for what transpired that day we were seated in her dormie beside my girlfriend and opposite us were her parents she was finding it difficult to confess and when the words i failed finally came out the first thing her father said were that's okay then my girlfriend started crying and her parents consoled her they were hugging and giving her words of encouragement assuring her everything will be all right and that the thing to do is to move forward and try again i just sat there watching them and feeling envious thinking this is what parents should be doing for their children it came as a total shock to me this level openness and understanding this kind of parent-child relationship was alien to me i promised myself that if i were to become a father i would be like her parents i don't hate my parents though they weren't bad people they just had ridiculously high expectations of their kids my siblings and i had a happy childhood for the most part sometimes we would sit and talk about how crazy our parents are and laugh a lot when i got my first teaching job i had moved from knee pennsylvania to southern arizona i rented a house with my husband and another couple the house was huge absolute insanity for what we paid for it when my students found out i lived in a two-story house they all were in disbelief i was told that only rich people lived in two-story houses because no one can afford the ac bill in the summer in my defense i was making around 29k a year and paying for a cross-country move so definitely not rich but it really put my students level of poverty smack dab in front of my face mid-2000s i dated a very attractive black girl in college i was a six foot 200 pounds athletic white guy ran into the college basketball ball team at a diner they were openly mocking her and i for being together not mad at me but mad at her for not being with a black guy really opened my mind about racism it goes both ways in jamaica it's taboo to go down on girls so the guys expected head but won't ever return the favor coming from northern europe it was frustrating and made no sense realizing that in the uk and northern europe clubs and bars close at like two to three a.m at the latest and that being drunk before midnight is normal i'm from spain so here we go out at 1am and clubs close at 5 to 6 a.m i realize now that it's actually spanish nightlife which is a bit over the top or wild and that we have a different drinking culture but imagine my surprise when i went to visit friends a few years ago in the uk and they were getting ready at like 9 to 10 which for me was dinner time there are a few so i will list them in chronological order the building's full of bullet holes and the warning signs for mines in bosnia such a contrast with the beautiful nature and mountains they have there the hectic life in jamaa the central square of marrakech morocco oh and fully veiled women you could see only the eyes asking if you wanted a tattoo buses in santo domingo that had no doors and the feeling of being careful at all times in dominican republic also the heavy contrast between the rich and the poor within 10 kilometers i saw restaurants with rolls-royces lobsters private jets barrios slums made of corrugated iron and children without any clothes around probably when i was in china and people would either come up to me and ask to take a picture of me or just straight up starting taking pictures of me right in front of me i'm six feet two and a woman and they thought i must be a model or a freak i mean people think it's odd where i live but they don't come up to me and go you're tall picture i circumflex one guy stopped taking pictures of animals in the zoo to take pictures of me i must be on so many chinese people's social media and family photos people would come up with their kids and think it was great trying to cross the street in hanoi vietnam you can spot somebody who just got in a mile away because the look of apprehension and confusion on their face as they try to figure out how to do it there are very few crosswalks with walk signs in most places you look for a gap in the traffic and go in bangkok you just make sure the flow of traffic would have time to stop before they hit you and you just go and maintain a constant pace in hanoi especially near the french quarter you just slowly walk into traffic there are no gaps you can sort of put your hand out to let people know you're going but you just kind of maintain a slow inching walking pace and traffic will part around you scary as hell the first time i was raised in an extremely mormon family with 50 plus cousins living relatively nearby i attended a christian private school with a student body of maybe 1 000 students between all grades one to six we had to wear button-downs and blazers and recite the pledge of allegiance every day and read bible verses in class before lessons when i was 13 my family moved to minnesota and i went straight into public middle school where swearing piercings racial integration something i hadn't even recognized i had never experienced and we didn't have to say the pledge or read bible verses cause the majority of students weren't christian let alone mormons so yeah probably that i am coming from a country where people take of their shoes inside the house at some point i figured out that this is not a standard thing all around the globe i never got it as i perceive shoes you wear outside as dirty and unhygienic let's say you step into something like dog poop you would drag the bacteria into your house and spread them out across your rooms eventually then you pillow falls off the bed you pick it up and basically have dog poop in your face however that was my biggest culture shock thanks for listening to radio tts hit the subscribe button if you are not already a member of the community thanks by the way for anyone that has already subscribed anyway share your own cultural shock stories in the comments below

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Id: uisKLabc9g4

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020