Asklemmy

I'm a NZer living in Australia, some people didn't understand me saying "a wee bit *", like "it's a wee bit annoying".

I'm not very well traveled.

I’m American. Moving to Hong Kong for 3 years was a huge culture shock and a huge middle finger to “American exceptionalism”.

But moving back AFTER the worse of the pandemic??? Holy shit. A massive shock - there was a sort of post-apocalyptic exhausted survivors vibe to everyone and everything.

It was truly culture shocking to see.

Moving from a rural 10,000 population town, to a multi-million population major city.

Visited canada a few days ago.

I thought that the people would be super nice, in my experience they don't. People working in tourism are super friendly but we felt that the people are super harsh with tourists.

We even had a group of kids saying out loud "I don't like people with big backpacks" (And no my backpack was not touching them or on a seat) or a security officer saying that he does not work on the information department so he was not helping us.

I have family there and I got to meet some incredible people but I felt that they were super hash sometimes.

Also Canada is beautiful!

Moved to Maine and literally everyone was white.

The size of grocery stores in the US, coming from Hong Kong. Also, the massive lack of good public transit, urban walkability, and just cars cars cars everywhere.

Paper money. Just... What? Why can you just rip up money?

I lived in China for a year after college, and that was basically fine since I was already pretty knowledgeable about the country and I went into it expecting to be off balance and that there would be a lot of new things. What was a surprise was the culture shock when I came back to the US. I don't think that the jet lag helped, but I remember feeling really really out of sorts for about a week and just generally in a bit of shock about how different life was here having largely not been exposed to it for a year.

Probably moving to a big city from a prondomity Mennonite village I grew up in. I am not a Mennonite myself, not religious either, just grew up in that kind of environment. A tiny unfinished suburb surrounded by miles of corn fields and cows.

Highlights include

• having to idea how public transit worked I was riding the bus without paying for the first few months because I didn't realize I needed to.

• saw my first homeless people, saw women dressed "imodestly", and tall buildings. These are not things that bothered me but certainly things I should have seen prior to my 20s. I had no clue how to interact with people outside my bubble.

• having grown up with many siblings and close friends I was hit with a lot of loneliness. Definetly a low point.

• I also had none of the skills needed to survive life on my own in a big city. Schools teach budgeting but they didn't teach me to avoid scammers, where to shop, how to get places, housing, access to health services ect.

I'm still learning about 15 years later. Now it's about assertive communication skills, legal knowledge, cultural histories, how to pay respects to indigionous cultures and why its important to do so, im understanding local politics and how to work with it.

Frankly that's my favorite part of all this. I'm (slowly) learning, and feel like I am growing from being a part of the culture and not in a bubble.

Reverse racism in China and to a less extent Japan. Only really exists for white people. Better pay and more attention just for being white but it get old really quick. I’ve actually found that it’s city people who are more annoying about it. When I got to the countryside I find them more kind. With all the things wrong with America, I am thankful for it not being an ethnostate.

Recycling accessibility and street art displays. I live in a place where it's either plain boring wall or grafitti(am super ok with that, they look cool), it just caught me by surprise when I saw some colorful walls with surreal art in Western Europe. Also how people are much warmer and relaxed.

Becoming a civilian again after being in the military was interesting. Simple things felt weird all the time; I kept feeling like I had to show my ID to buy groceries, stuff like that. But probably moving to the East Coast (NoVA) from Colorado in 2002 was the biggest. I was in absolute shock at the price of housing, hours of commuting every day, and most of all, how horrible the people were. Mean, rude people, angry all the time and intentionally threatening on the roads. Being there made me cry a lot in the first year.