Culture Shock On This Side of the Ocean

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Tuesday, 29 June 2010 13:42

It’s surprising how much a person misses out on when she’s out of her own country and culture for a few years. When we landed in New York, I expected to feel instantly at home. After all, it's my own country, right?  Instead, surrounded by all those English-speakers, I was intimidated (and frankly it takes a lot to intimidate me.) Americans, I discovered, were loud and energetic and friendly to people they didn't know; they wore their hair and clothing with a sloppy indifference that is the prerogative only of those from very rich countries; they talked knowledgably about “American Idol,” and seemed to understand how DVR works. All the airplane movies were reruns to them.

I didn’t leave culture shock behind me at the airport: my first trip to Wal*Mart was overwhelming. I bought a pair of shorts for $4.50. Four dollars and fifty cents: that's only 135 rubles! I  rounded a corner of one aisle and saw a veritable wall of baking chips: chocolate; white; caramel; heath bar; mint; butterscotch; peanut butter; striped….and bags and bags of pecans in any shape and size I could imagine. So much choice, and all inexpensive. I wanted to buy everything, and at the same time, was afraid to buy anything, lest I go overboard and begin hoarding food and clutching at possessions like a Great Depression survivor. 

At Target, I need to buy a razor, but could only find one with 5 blades. Five?  Forgive me for saying that this seems a tiny bit wasteful to me. I at least expected that with 5 blades, I should only need to use the razor once a week at most. Disappointingly, this was not true. It turns out (sorry Venus) that 5 blades don’t work all that much better than 2; they just cost more. 

On the positive side though, I love how Americans are comfortable striking up conversations with perfect strangers. At the checkout counter yesterday, the woman behind me pointed to my son’s bag of Pepper Relish flavored chips and said, “Oh, that looks good! I’ve never heard of that flavor before. Is it good? Where did you find them?” At first I was alarmed: Did she want me to give her my bag of chips? Was she going to kidnap my son? Too late, I realized she was just being friendly. I shot her an unconvinced half-grin, and I’m sure she thought I was a terrible snob.  

I suppose this feeling of being sort-of-at-home in two cultures, but not completely belonging to either one is just par for the course in our lives. Like American culture, like Russian culture, there is good and bad in it. Learning to be flexible and forgiving wherever you are isn’t, in the end, such a bad habit to have to cultivate.