What Was Your Biggest Culture Shock Moving To America?

immigrant redditors any funny culture shock stories when I was in high school a student in my class told us the story of his family's first night in America they were from China and moved into a house on the 31st of October more commonly known as Halloween they had never heard of this American holiday the entire evening there were people dressed up in crazy costumes coming to their door and ringing the doorbell and the family had no idea why he said they spent much of the night huddled together under a table with all the lights off in the house completely terrified in Turkish the word for birthday cake is pasta when my husband was flying to the US for the first time he saw pasta on the airline menu and he was so excited at the thought of having birthday cake on the flight that he ordered it he was sorely disappointed that's so cute I moved from Colombia to Chile with my family a couple of years ago and despite both being spanish-speaking countries the slang greatly varies particularly our word for straw Pattillo can be interpreted as a diminutive of chilean slang for joint Peto on our first night out at a fancy restaurant to celebrate my dad's relocation me excuse me waitress could I get a joint straw waitress um sorry what me a joint I just want a little joint waitress looks at my dad dad didn't you hear the kid get him a joint waitress I'm sorry I don't think we do that here dad come on it's a joint how hard can it be we start realizing she might be misunderstanding us dad it's a joint we both pretend to hold our fingers in front of our mouths and inhale to simulate a straw lol in Mexico both of those words mean Don so count yourself lucky you didn't move to northern Mexico and order one xD German in the US I was very confused by the greeter in Walnut huge African American greeter welcome to Walmart enjoy your stay me yes hello do I know you greeter what me how do I know you greeter I just want you to enjoy your stay at Walmart me okay then I moved on thinking he was crazy and tried to combat his loneliness by talking with people he does not know I was quite surprised when someone explained to me the concept of a greeter having a stall greeter is one of the several reasons why Wilma failed in Germany in Irish and when I went to America no one had a freaking clue what I was saying also said any credit to a guy in a shop and said he was calling the police I just googled the meaning of crank and I have to say that's the funniest misunderstanding I've read so far when my dad first came here from Vietnam back in 1975 they believed that they would never see their native foods ever again these foods included local favorites but most importantly rice they thought they would never see rice again I can't even imagine my dad and his family when they saw rice in a supermarket he said they literally bought out the entire store supply of rice TL DR Asians love rice my friend emigrated to Australia from China when she was 7 she cried in the airport because she thought that China was the only country that had milk didn't happen to me it's in 1991 when the Soviet Union was newly opened I hired two young Russian women they were 21 and 24 years old the elder one was a Moscow resident a university graduate a lawyer and soon to be a judge not a dumb hillbilly is my point the other was just a provincial girl I picked them up at the airport and while I was driving them to their workplace I stopped for gas I took them in the adjoining convenience store and asked them if they wanted anything to eat or drink they both said they were hungry and I told them to take anything they wanted so the cashier and I would pay for it they just sort of huddled close staring wide-eyed I kept telling them take what you want they didn't move eventually I figured there might be a slight language barrier and they are seeing brand names for the first time they probably don't know what is in the packages I mean if you saw him and Emmas and Pringles for the first time what would you think I decided just to continue on the college dorm where they would be housed and feed them their weeks later I asked them why they didn't get any food the first night and they told me they didn't really think it was a store they thought it was a food museum they had never seen a clean bright shop with such abundance nicely packaged neatly on display even after they understood they seemed to distrust the supermarket thinking they were not really welcome to touch things take as many items as they want and so on I would take them to the grocery store expecting them to get a week's worth of things and they would each get one pepperoni stick or bagel and run to the car am i her Moscow has changed since then Moscow had changed to a very dreary place by 1990 in the 70s I hear it was quite nice but the 80s were a very cruel time my boyfriend has a few just to give a bit of background this guy has the most ridiculous stories imaginable as a kid everything from a pet tiger to getting swiped by a monkey to being in a coma to a whiskey night no not correlated so that's what we're dealing with he came over from India when he was 10 and now some of the stories evidently three days after he moved to America Wisconsin it snowed three feet up until his move he had not seen a white person not in pictures not on TV not anywhere his logic the snow had a whitening agent that made white people white he told me he got excited about getting whiter because fairer skinned people get the hotter girls in the arranged marriage market he was 10 he wasn't really able to speak English but he still wanted to make friends somehow he noticed that a lot of people would wear these shirts and shoes and everything with a giant check mark yes it was the Nike logo he thought it was a sign of approval by his thinking back to Marx in India he pleaded his mother to get a giant check shirt so that he could have friends he still has one of his first to this day over a decade later this is the story of how he went from left to right handed in art class his art teacher asked him to make a collage of all the things that interest him and represent him he loved airplanes and Disney yeep at least that brand got over there but also older cultural items in the array he also drew a swastika it turns out that his teacher was Jewish and got extremely offended the teacher yelled at him until he cried drew a huge F on the project and made him draw another one as he started drawing the teacher took the pencil from his left hand placed it in his right and said now you can draw he had no idea of the Holocaust at this point and the art teacher had no idea of what in actual swastika was baseball tryouts saw that it involved a bat and a ball thought it was similar to cricket goes out gets a right handed love by now he is settled into the right in sports is able to hit the ball but runs with the bat coach cuts him from not knowing the rules these are just a few more stories to follow if intrusted spent a while in the u.s. originally from UK you know that thing used to rub out pencil that's a rubber in the UK apparently it means something else in the states I emigrated from Korea to the US ten years back I was shocked to find out that the public libraries here a huge and free as long as you are a resident in the area I was also shocked that there were more than just encyclopedias and dictionaries at the library my parents are still amazed at how cheap the beef is around here the first time they realized that the beef at the wholesale store is not only cheap but very fresh they went on weekly barbecue binges we had steak all the time Korean barbecue is hella good so is soondubu my mum had a few problems when we moved from the u.s. to Australia in 1962 she invited some friends for tea they came we gave them tea and she was quite astonished that they expected a meal as well one party invitation asked us to bring a clade she did several of them all empty she thought they must be running low on crockery an Australian friend gave her coffee the real American Way which was apparently to boil a cup of milk and put instant coffee in it I'm Australian and I have never heard or seen someone boil milk and put coffee in it went to Green Bay for a Packer game years back chillin on Saturday afternoon touring the stadium feeling a little peckish we head up to Curly's for a quick snack the two of us decide to split a plate of nachos $5.99 on the appetizer menu when it comes it takes up nearly the entire small bar table there at there is easily a pound and a half of meat and an entire brick of shredded cheese on it Americans and your food holy Frick you don't play around there's an advantage to producing somewhere around a quarter of the food in the world with something like 5 percent of the world's population my friend told me this one he's from Singapore that happened when he was in the UK where we live in the UK it's common to call people dear darling honey honey TC especially to people younger than you he didn't realize this in four months thought everyone was really into him and even told his mum that it backfired on him later when he started an order at KFC with hi sweetie and got shouted at by the server for trying to hit on her we do this in the south us too when I moved to Salt Lake it became a huge issue because people would think I was being condescending I finally just explained it to a customer one day after she bit my head off and she felt like an idiot for yelling at me over what was to me normal I was about six years old and my parents were still pretty fresh to Canada from Iran my dad decides one day that he wants to go buy our sheep from a livestock auction when we get there he finds a butcher shop and I go in with him his English wasn't the best but he looks at the butcher and says I want sheep to kill the shop went silent in the butcher just stared at my dad until he had it how much I don't remember what happened after that but we went home empty-handed and my dad has never been to an animal auction since in college a girl told us of a foreign student from Morocco who was rooming with them in college they were in the traffic jam because people were slowing down looking at an accident anyway things crept to a standstill and the Moroccan girl stepped out and raised her middle finger in the air surely there was a lot of car honks and creative language thrown her way the girl jumped back in the car horrified and a bit confused she explained that in Morocco when you raise your middle finger it means for traffic to proceed not in Mercker do' i think we all want rubberneckers to hurry the heck up till i'm moroccan in italian a preservative is a condom I went to the bread store and asked posso avere in PES OD pain sends a preservative E which would mean can I have a piece of bread without preservatives or so I thought got a lot of weird looks from the bread maker I asked for a piece of bread without condoms it's the same in Spanish my Spanish teacher was talking about American obesity with her hostess and ended up saying that American food is full of condoms my class had a good laugh about that one not an immigrant but I was a volunteer for a group that helped foreign students get a feel for what American college life was really like I was spending a lot of time with some students from China and I taught them how to play Ultimate Frisbee we decided on a decent halftime and went into the building to get some water I went to the water fountain push the bar leaned over and drank some water the Chinese students just stared at me because it was something they'd never seen before the guy after me just walked up to the water fountain and leaned over hoping for the water to come out I indicated the bar that needed to be pushed and he laughed it off but not having any water fountain seems like a significant culture difference to me in China you usually can't drink the tap water without boiling at first at the University at which I am currently studying there is a water boiler in each all instead of a water fountain students come by and fill up their water bottles with tea leaves to make tea instead at first it seemed weird but now I'm pretty used to drinking tea each day during class not me but a friend of mine was immigrating from Egypt to Canada now this fellow's family knew almost nothing of Canada he and his family assumed that Canada was done near the freezing mark all year round sir my friends family depart Cairo for Toronto and as they approach the great white north my friend and his family are alarmed but the in-flight temperature monitor showed a temperature of 35 °c 95 °f they thought they were headed to the wrong country his family had to ask the stewardess if they were going to the right country as his family exited the plane into the hot humid smoky and muggy Toronto air they were dressed in full snow suits my friend Amir and his family was shocked at how Canada had temperatures in the mid 30s mid 90s I went to an international school in England and every year we'd get a bunch of Asian kids turn up with Arctic coats they never wore a friend of mine moved here from India with his small children and wife more than a decade ago sometime during his first February colleagues had introduced the idea of Valentine's Day to him it was basically explained that you display your love by buying flowers and/or chocolates maybe even some jewelry and to some extent the bigger the better as is often customary these gifts can be sent directly to the significant others work place not wishing his wife to be left without he had delivered to her office a giant round cemetery wreath stand in all he was not aware of its significance he just thought it looked great a nice-looking display to be sure but the cultural context made for many laughs when my family moved to the US I was freaking amazed by how huge the supermarkets are in how much variety of each thing there is like two trillion types of cereal and how many otherwise normal items are necessarily our cheese or cinnamon flavored we freaking love our cheese and cinnamon in the US we also like our breakfast grains move to France three years ago from America I had no idea about the whole business thing which is when you greet someone with kisses for the first few weeks I was there whenever my wife would introduce me to someone it was terribly terribly awkward I didn't realize you were supposed to touch cheeks so you can imagine how stupid I must have seen just putting my head next to theirs on the left and making a smooch sound and then doing the same thing on the right mortifying I still hate businesses do many French people I later learned pretty much custom in many European countries including where live Italy this comes courtesy of my great-grandmother when she was applying to get US citizenship they asked her who the first president was language barriers and such aside she replied George washer tub I lived in Israel for a little while more on mo Ron is a common girl's name met a hot chick and when she told me her name I laughed in her face I'm good like that also Sharon is a boy's name there to be fair it spelled Moran not sure if this makes things better or worse I have a pretty funny culture shock story from when I moved overseas to live for 2.5 years I am American and lived in a small village suburb with a Muslim family that spoke no English whatsoever they had no prior experience with foreigners and I was going to be living with them for three months the family was extremely nice but initially communication was a bit of a challenge eventually I started getting better with the language and could convey basic caveman sentences such as I go now school and me hungry please almost every night my host mom tried to help me get better by quizzing me as best she could the following is an approximate transcript one of these language review sessions from the perspective of my traditional conservative Muslim host mom but do you like this her pointing to an apple I like apples do you like that her pointing to a fig I like PE laat walnut no none none when ooo don't say that what P say fig fig fig me Finn I feeI eiei P just don't talk about that food later on that afternoon I pass by my host mom on the phone with one of her friends she is cracking up laughing stops me and gives me the phone say what you said earlier unbe wa-ha-ha-ha-haaa I give the phone back to her as she is almost crying laughing and wander to my room confused as heck it wasn't till the next day's language class that I found out that fig in the slang word for TR one letter off TL DR unintentionally told my Muslim host mom I love the P from Nigeria lived in Norway before coming to the u.s. I saw TV shows featuring Texas accents and I thought the East Texas accent was just a comedic take out of the TX accent went to college in Texas and I remember being introduced to an East Texan who shook my hand and spoke in that same accent I thought was a joke it was all I could do to keep my face straight but I was screaming in my head oh my lord they actually talk like that another culture shock were the number of drink options in a gas station I was used to being given a drink or at best five choices stopped at a 7-eleven and got a medium coke the lady handed me a large cup and pointed at a fountain that had easily 10 soft drink choices I took from each one and walked out happy my drink was horrible but I didn't care it tasted like America I moved to Norway from the US for a couple of years from the ages 3-5 because my dad worked in a hospital I only distinctly remember two things everything was like a fake Nursery Rhyme village can't really explain it and the first time I saw a woman with white blond hair and light blue eyes I freak the freak out and cried my roommate in a u.s. college was from Yemen one day he came home from the supermarket very happy that he had bought the biggest chicken he had ever seen he was excited to cook it and invite friends over to eat it it took a while to explain to him that he had bought a turkey not a chicken I married a Polish immigrant down here in Texas we've got two kids there have been several little mispronunciations that were always amusing but nothing beats the time when I came home and my wife asked me what's a [ __ ] see my daughter just took up soccer she's in the sports section of the store with a young man walked up and asked if he could help her and she starts off with I need shoes with clips the young man just froze up and stared at her she thought he didn't understand her which happens sometimes with her accent so she repeated herself shoes with clips I can only imagine the gears in that boy's head knowing if he bust out laughing like I did there could be issues he said he wasn't sure what she needed then the manager showed up again repeated I need some shoes with clips now she had two people staring at her finally she burped it out the piece of information that solved all the issues for soccer in you nism both guys blurted cleats then my wife that's what I said klitz the kid started giggling the manager started blushing and took her straight to the shoes he asked where she's from she tell him Poland and he told her that he heard the accent and that her pronunciations was only a bit off but enough to make a world of difference she asked what she said he said go home and ask your husband this after she kept trying to save right I can imagine her out loud clips klitz Klee ie Heights Colette cleat I'm red with laughter at this point and she finally asked so what the heck is a [ __ ] I nearly fell off the sofa telling her and boy was she ever red in the face other minor awesome mistakes my four-year-old daughter calling grandpa a prick because prick is a fart and he farted next to her to mixing up ordering a steak rare and rare in high school before I met her someone told her the word corncob is synonymous with thing so anytime she didn't know a word she would just throw out the word corncob where we normally use thing and sometimes when using the word thing correctly she would throw in corncob what's that corncob over there how do you say that corncob in English I had some corn cob on the mind today but forgot about it that was nipped in the boot ETD a few weeks after we were dating I'm starting to learn polish so I'm sure she'll have her revenge TL DR I got a hot dog stuck up my urethra located in my nose and it took Takeru Kobayashi a whole weekend to beat Super Mario Brothers DS anecdote e's corn cobs visiting my wife's friend and her husband was fun both my wife and her friends speak English and Korean her husband speaks English and Spanish I only speak English trouble is my wife and her friend don't understand each other when they speak English as my wife learned it in the US and her friend learned it in the UK I spent the whole time translating from English to English I used to work nights in a backpackers hostel in Australia every once in a while groups of American girls would head out to go bar-hopping only to return looking slightly baffled a few minutes later having discovered that most inner-city pubs clubs and bars have signs at the door saying no thongs thongs Australian for flip-flops some people in the u.s call flip-flops thongs the other people who don't usually just laugh at them I was visiting America from career despite being an American citizen and was shocked when a friend of mine told me not to talk to that guy because he is a nerd in Korea you get bullied for being stupid over hill you get bullied for being too stupid without being an athlete or too smart aka anything different from normal I moved to England from Norway a year ago I used to make fun of people for buying bottled water moved here and I have a full water bottle beside me under empty one on the table I can't drink the tap water here without getting nauseous strangers talk to me I mean I live in London so not at much but strangers will talk to me on buses while queuing still the hardest word for me to spell waiting at the bar in the pub while in the shop and it freaks me out because I'm so so bad at small talk and I can only talk about the weather for like five minutes speaking of shops they bag the shoppings for you been here a year just getting used to it I would refuse to go shopping without my boyfriend for a good five months because it was such an awkward experience just standing there holding my money while they did all the packing and I still refused to buy razor blades or condoms in a normal shop because I have to ask for them all the cheese here has a rubber aftertaste I miss going into a pub and ask for a beer and get handed a pint or 0.4 of the local lager I cannot for the love of God master the hallo routing that is hi how are you doing in the appropriate answer and if I'm the one greeting it's usually a stumbly hi how's you girls will hug me after talking to them once and I'm expected to hug people I can't even remember talking - no matter what I say as a greeting the second question will either be so weary from or on you from Island I have neither a very strong Norwegian accent nor an Irish accent but I do have red hair and green eyes and after saying I'm from Norway they will compliment my English when it was obviously my poor English that got them asking feels like a backhanded compliment every time I feel like the most Awkward person on the planet some days I'm an American girl who made the mistake of stating her preference for wearing skirts and dresses in the UK by saying oh I never wear pants as a Chinese American born into a pretty Chinese household who grew up in NYC I'm pretty Americanized but I retain a lot of my Asian mess something that really weirded me out was that American parents tell their kids that they love them hug them kiss them etc they really show their affection growing up I wasn't really hugged much and rarely ever told by my parents that they loved me but it was implied so when I started hanging out with my American friends I would love to get hugs from my friends moms feelsbadman jpg it's like y'all appreciated I love calling my friends mom's mom and pretend I'm their kid what's up with that is that asian culture or is not just my family to this day I'm pretty standoffish and kind of intimidated by physical signs of affection actually I suck at showing affection and I think it affects me a lot I love rice and had it practically nightly and was shocked when I found out that some Americans don't eat rice on a daily basis ate dinner at my polish friend's house I don't know if this is true for all Polish people but you are meant to take your shoes off at the door my friend gave me no warning and his dad literally carried me out of the house by the neck and threw me out I looked at my friend who just shrugged his shoulders and closed the door the toilets in Thailand and most other Southeast Asian countries apparently it's bad to flush toilet paper down the toilet as it messes with their sewage system instead you get a power hose that sits beside you and you blast the crap off your butt at first I was like no freakin way but good God Almighty it feels amazing on your ring then you take one sheet of paper and dry your butt then throw it in a bin I thought this was the best thing ever and it made my battle passages so much more enjoyable I'm Indonesian and I can confirm this I miss that sweet feeling of gentle water caressing and cleaning my butt but then again I am gay wait maybe I am gay because of that my sister and I had just arrived in the UK for a holiday and we went into a discount store as she wanted to buy some cheap Footwear what Australians would call Fong's but what Brits and most other English speakers would call flip-flops the conversation went something like this sis excuse me do you have any thongs staff member any word sis thongs staff member shocked look sis you know rubber thongs staff member what sis because nobody was getting it pointed to staff members feet you know the ones you wear on your feet staff member look of horror I'm from Italy and I started drinking with my family at the age of 14 a glass of wine on Sundays and the occasional beer with friends on the weekend nights when I moved to the US to enter a military academy my dad told me that in America you cannot drink until you are 21 years old I was shocked when I saw they sold root beer and vending machines I was like what the heck was my dad talking about even we in Italy don't have alcohol and vending machines this is awesome it was very disappointing when I realized it was just soda my grandfather is French Swiss and he fought in World War two after that he received a commission in the Swiss army and went to a German part of the country to work the thing is that at the time he only knew Italian and French and he was having a hard time learning German on his first day in that area he went to a cafe and sat down and started to listen for someone who might speak French who worked there but to no avail the waitress came up to take his order and by chance at the next table he heard a man order something so he just repeated what he heard that man say to the waitress she came back with a small coffee and a croissant my grandpa made that same thing for breakfast every day for months until he became confident enough in his German to try to order something else this story made me smile and I thought you should know that : I have a pretty cute story my mother came to the u.s. specifically Texas in 87 I was 3 years old at the time I don't remember this happening but it's a story my mom tells from time to time my father had already been here for a year at a time he was working on his PhD so he was able to greet us when we arrived at the airport my father took my mother's bags walked with us all the way out to the sidewalk and told us to wait for a while so he could bring the car around now say what you want about Texas but you can't deny the fact that people generally tend to be really friendly so while my mother was waiting a lot of people passing by looked at her smiled said hi etc eventually my father came around we got in the car and my mother said to my father I think the people mistook me for a famous actress everyone is saying hi and smiling at me my father just let her know that this was the way people were in this part of the country also before coming over my mother was worried that she wouldn't be able to find any milk for me in the US she thought that a country so advanced must have done away with cows and milk if you are new to the channel you can subscribe I publish new videos every day 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Channel: Updoot

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Keywords: immigrants, immigrants culture, culture shock, culture shock in america, culture shock city lights, culture, differences, #updootst, updoot, updoot reddit, updoot everything, reddit on tap, toadfilms, pewdiepie, reddit, askreddit, funny reddit, reddit stories, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, reddit compilation, r/, r/askreddit, top posts of r/, askreddit reading, best reddit posts, top posts of all time, people of reddit, askreddit question, ask reddit, subreddit, sub

Id: v9ZqAuvl0cc

Length: 30min 48sec (1848 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020