Culture
1 - Chile. "Tomorrow" means next week. "Next week" means never. "I'm already there" means "i'm thinking about starting to prepare to go out".
For a ten-minutes-early person that was jarring.
2 - Balinese funerals and how they celebrate death. I was sitting on the beach on my first day there and heard a crowd coming, carrying food and playing festive music. I thought it was some kind of party or wedding until I realized they were carrying a corpse.
3 - Indonesia. People just sit next to you in the train/bus. Ask personal questions immediately. Want to know why you don't have k**s, or a husband. And why you're fat or that you should get a haircut because your hair is ugly.
It felt like Christmas at home, but then for months, from multiple people instead of my mum.
4 - Japanese convenience stores. My local 7-11 has sticky floors and doubtful looking packaged sandwiches. The 7-11s in Japan are clean, well-lit, have a great selection of lunch/dinner prepackaged meals, and not only do they have a cold drink section, they have a special heated unit for hot drinks. When I saw all the technological innovations in Japan, I felt like I came from a third world country.
5 - When I went to Bangladesh with my girlfriend last year we went to the city her father grew up in before he came to the States. I remember at one point we walked past a station and seeing people climbing on the roof of a train due to the crowding, some in business suits, was quite an eye opener. After seeing that I have never complained about riding the subway again
6 - Nap-time is everything in Spain. Visited Barcelona a few months ago, and it was my first time in Spain. Couldn't believe when my friend told me that all the shops and businesses are closed because it's "siesta time".
7 - The air pollution in major Chinese cities is so bad that your eyes water the second you step out of the airport. You also undergo a sort of acclimation sickness within the first couple weeks
8 - I was in Germany a couple years ago with a friend of a friend who was born in the Soviet Union (and who still lives in a former Soviet satellite).
Someone tried to get us to sign a petition. After the guy left, I had to explain the concept of a petition and he said, "Oh. In my country if you want to change the government you just disappear."
9 - Went to Japan. First night at 1 AM in the metro and it was loaded with people in suits and other formal clothing looking completely exhausted almost falling asleep on each others laps, just an ordinary day for Tokyo people.
10 - Went to Egypt last summer. We had hired a personal tour guide because there was no way we would be walking around by ourselves in Egypt. The service came with an Egyptian government security guard to protect us, and at one point my mother asked our tour guide (not the guard) what life what he thought of the government right then, and he said it was great. Later when the guard was getting us into a site, the tour guide told my mom not to ask questions like that in front of the guard because he (the tour guide) could be punished for talking negatively about the government
11 - In Beijing old fat men do this thing called the Beijing bikini where they tuck the bottom of their t-shirt into the neck to expose their gut. It wasn't exactly a shock but it was hilarious.
12 - Germany: How clean are bathrooms?. I've frequent to Germany for business reasons along with rest of Europe but Germany takes the cake in terms if cleanliness of the bathrooms. Every stay I had I found my bathroom to be absolutely spotless. I found their bathrooms to be cleaner than the rooms.
13 - When i went to London, all the faucets in all the public bathrooms had handles so you could turn the water on and off like a fucking adult, and all the stall doors went all the way to the floor.
14 - I live in northern Canada in a less than 800 people town in the middle of nowhere. So the first time I went to California was a massive culture shock. Big cities, 8 lanes of freeway traffic, having to lock your doors, skysc****rs (anything above 3 floors), subways, well... everything really. I think what got to me most was the lack of trees.
15 - So I went to Vietnam a couple years back with my friend Marcus. Marcus is black, I am not. We’re eating at this small place tucked deep in the mountains when our server comes up to us, his friend in tow. The server, without saying a word, saddles next to Marcus, strikes a buddy Jesus pose, and walks off to get our food. I looked at Marcus and said “You’re on some dudes twitter right now with the caption ‘Not Obama, but met my first black guy’ or something similar.”
16 - Greece. Seeing a whole family (mum and dad and two toddlers) on a motorbike.
17 - In Norway people actually stop for you at crosswalks, even without lights.
18 - Truck playing music while driving down streets of Taipei. I commented that it might be an ice cream truck. My host looked at me funny and replied "that's the garbage truck. If we want ice cream, we go to the 7 Eleven store".
19 - USA to South Korea for school. Eating lunch in the cafeteria for the first time on my second day, trying to eat ramen with chopsticks and realizing too late that I should've spent more time working with chopsticks before coming to a country with very few forks. Thankfully another girl nearby took pity on me and taught me through miming how to make it work.
USA to Korea, this time to teach English. You don't quite realize the tiger mom stereotype is real until you're surrounded by a pack of moms at a kindergarten parent-teacher conference, demanding to know why their five-year-old likes gym better than learning English.
20 - Moved to and started driving in Poland. Everyone drove as if the speed limit signs were in imperial rather than metric.
Then I went on a trip to India (Calcutta) and I saw real driving. When I returned to Poland I realised that Polish traffic is way more insane than it ought to be but not really insane.
For a ten-minutes-early person that was jarring.
2 - Balinese funerals and how they celebrate death. I was sitting on the beach on my first day there and heard a crowd coming, carrying food and playing festive music. I thought it was some kind of party or wedding until I realized they were carrying a corpse.
3 - Indonesia. People just sit next to you in the train/bus. Ask personal questions immediately. Want to know why you don't have k**s, or a husband. And why you're fat or that you should get a haircut because your hair is ugly.
It felt like Christmas at home, but then for months, from multiple people instead of my mum.
4 - Japanese convenience stores. My local 7-11 has sticky floors and doubtful looking packaged sandwiches. The 7-11s in Japan are clean, well-lit, have a great selection of lunch/dinner prepackaged meals, and not only do they have a cold drink section, they have a special heated unit for hot drinks. When I saw all the technological innovations in Japan, I felt like I came from a third world country.
5 - When I went to Bangladesh with my girlfriend last year we went to the city her father grew up in before he came to the States. I remember at one point we walked past a station and seeing people climbing on the roof of a train due to the crowding, some in business suits, was quite an eye opener. After seeing that I have never complained about riding the subway again
6 - Nap-time is everything in Spain. Visited Barcelona a few months ago, and it was my first time in Spain. Couldn't believe when my friend told me that all the shops and businesses are closed because it's "siesta time".
7 - The air pollution in major Chinese cities is so bad that your eyes water the second you step out of the airport. You also undergo a sort of acclimation sickness within the first couple weeks
8 - I was in Germany a couple years ago with a friend of a friend who was born in the Soviet Union (and who still lives in a former Soviet satellite).
Someone tried to get us to sign a petition. After the guy left, I had to explain the concept of a petition and he said, "Oh. In my country if you want to change the government you just disappear."
9 - Went to Japan. First night at 1 AM in the metro and it was loaded with people in suits and other formal clothing looking completely exhausted almost falling asleep on each others laps, just an ordinary day for Tokyo people.
10 - Went to Egypt last summer. We had hired a personal tour guide because there was no way we would be walking around by ourselves in Egypt. The service came with an Egyptian government security guard to protect us, and at one point my mother asked our tour guide (not the guard) what life what he thought of the government right then, and he said it was great. Later when the guard was getting us into a site, the tour guide told my mom not to ask questions like that in front of the guard because he (the tour guide) could be punished for talking negatively about the government
11 - In Beijing old fat men do this thing called the Beijing bikini where they tuck the bottom of their t-shirt into the neck to expose their gut. It wasn't exactly a shock but it was hilarious.
12 - Germany: How clean are bathrooms?. I've frequent to Germany for business reasons along with rest of Europe but Germany takes the cake in terms if cleanliness of the bathrooms. Every stay I had I found my bathroom to be absolutely spotless. I found their bathrooms to be cleaner than the rooms.
13 - When i went to London, all the faucets in all the public bathrooms had handles so you could turn the water on and off like a fucking adult, and all the stall doors went all the way to the floor.
14 - I live in northern Canada in a less than 800 people town in the middle of nowhere. So the first time I went to California was a massive culture shock. Big cities, 8 lanes of freeway traffic, having to lock your doors, skysc****rs (anything above 3 floors), subways, well... everything really. I think what got to me most was the lack of trees.
15 - So I went to Vietnam a couple years back with my friend Marcus. Marcus is black, I am not. We’re eating at this small place tucked deep in the mountains when our server comes up to us, his friend in tow. The server, without saying a word, saddles next to Marcus, strikes a buddy Jesus pose, and walks off to get our food. I looked at Marcus and said “You’re on some dudes twitter right now with the caption ‘Not Obama, but met my first black guy’ or something similar.”
16 - Greece. Seeing a whole family (mum and dad and two toddlers) on a motorbike.
17 - In Norway people actually stop for you at crosswalks, even without lights.
18 - Truck playing music while driving down streets of Taipei. I commented that it might be an ice cream truck. My host looked at me funny and replied "that's the garbage truck. If we want ice cream, we go to the 7 Eleven store".
19 - USA to South Korea for school. Eating lunch in the cafeteria for the first time on my second day, trying to eat ramen with chopsticks and realizing too late that I should've spent more time working with chopsticks before coming to a country with very few forks. Thankfully another girl nearby took pity on me and taught me through miming how to make it work.
USA to Korea, this time to teach English. You don't quite realize the tiger mom stereotype is real until you're surrounded by a pack of moms at a kindergarten parent-teacher conference, demanding to know why their five-year-old likes gym better than learning English.
20 - Moved to and started driving in Poland. Everyone drove as if the speed limit signs were in imperial rather than metric.
Then I went on a trip to India (Calcutta) and I saw real driving. When I returned to Poland I realised that Polish traffic is way more insane than it ought to be but not really insane.
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