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Culture shock is always something travelers experience. What was the most profound experience, for better or worse, or one you’ve heard from a friend, colleague, family member, etc.?
The metro doors in the United States opens automatically and when I was in France I was confused to why it the metro doors didn’t open. So I just stood there but the people behind me scooted me aside and used the handle. it’s a small culture shock but I felt silly, however, now I know the French metro operates a little differently.
As a French student in the US, my biggest culture shock concerns campus life in American universities. The classes but also the general living on campus is really different from what I know since it doesn’t even exist in France. The campus is a bubble where everybody knows each other, where a close relationship between professors and students is possible, but also where many events take place, and where a student lives 24/7 for at least a couple of years in his or her life. Learning to live in community, be involved in large associations, getting to know a lot of people and have access to opportunities that campus life and relationships can offer is a great experience for a college student but also for a future career. As a French exchange student, it motivated me in participating in associations to be involved in the community although I have never done that in France. Indeed in France such community doesn’t exist, therefore engagement in the community is less developed and opportunities not as numerous as in the US.
I think the biggest culture shock I had while in Korea was because of the country’s couple culture. How much and how they display PDA and the head-to-toe matching couple outfits and couple items confused my friends and I for a while. As it was everywhere around us, we slowly got used to it; but it’s still a big cultural difference that we like to discuss.
I went to Nicaragua when I was a senior in high school. I went to Nicaragua with no expectations of what a developing country meant, but being from the United States, I had really no idea what I was traveling to. I underwent major culture shock traveling for the capital into the mountain region of Nicaragua. The mountain region of Nicaragua is the most breathtaking place I have ever been. I was in literal awe of the natural beauty of the countryside. Once I arrived at the town I was traveling to, the living standards broke my heart. While I went in with no expectations, I really could not have imagined what life is like in a developing country.
Moving from an urban city to the suburbs was the biggest culture shock I experienced. It was not like the language was any different, it was moving from the northern tip of the state to the southern. I had never known any other lullaby other than the sounds of sirens, cars flying, buy old friends meeting right outside my window. Your neighbors just seconds away and all of us filled with a mutual understanding, which was that this was home.There was no need to be lured in by the glowing lights and smiling faces, leading me to it, like rose petals laid out by a lover. I was already so apart of it, I lived within it and it in me. Moving away from everything I called home was extremely difficult. A total of four people actually looked like me, or even had the same complexion as I, and even though we were speaking the same language we were definitely not speaking the same dialect. It took time as all things do, to feel at home in my new surroundings, but the biggest way to get over the culture shock was to become integrated into a new way of life. I explored nature and made new friends and now I speak a few different dialects of English. It helps to move outside your comfort zone, I dreaded the experience as soon as I received the news. I had built up a list of things I would not conform to before I went, creating anxiety leading up to the first day of school. But everything seems so monumentally difficult until you actually cross the bridge. You look back over your conquered nemesis and think, that wasn’t so bad.
My biggest culture shock moment was when I went to Spain for the first time. Everybody kisses on the cheek as a greeting and I almost always forgot this. I would go in for a hug or a handshake and they would go to kiss my cheek and we would end up this awkward exchange of me trying to transition from handshake/hug to kiss on the cheek and them trying to do the opposite. By the end of my trip, I had more or less gotten the hang of it, but there were definitely a few amusing mishaps!