Since it looks like we may be going down that "ask an X" way again, I thought we could have one that would apply for many people on the board. I know that there are several people who have up and moved countries. My move was to a pretty vanilla country, but I believe Kubla Kahn is in China, Audrey Monroe is in Costa Rica, and some others have lived for extended periods of time, or those who moved to the US/Canada. Focus: Ask some immigrants stuff. Culture shock, what they miss, what they don't miss, and what inspired them to move. Also, what challenges may have been encountered when it comes to integrating into society.
For those of you who went to places OTHER than the U.S.: Is it a real pisser that you can't get ranch dressing there? For those of you who went to the U.S.: Ranch dressing fucking owns, amirite?
You are actually spot on, because I love a thin layer on a burger, right below the avocado. Thousand Island gets the job done I suppose.
Ranch dressing is shit. Not "the shit." Just shit. Focus: any of you living in countries where you don't speak the native language, don't speak it well, or you didn't speak it well when you first moved? How are or were you compensating?
This is one I am curious about for other countries. Here, the government sponsors language classes for immigrants, from those who are illiterate in their native tongue to the college graduates, and if you work hard, you can get a couple of grand for completing the program. Sadly, many don't really bother with it, and take 2 years to get through what I covered in 3 months of university classes, and don't move beyond the mid level. But there is still a lot more pressure to learn the language than I ever saw in California for recent immigrants. What happens when you go to China? Do they do anything there?
If you're from the states living abroad, what's the stereotypical view of Americans? Are we clean, deodorant-wearing, self-righteous, violent thugs?
Yes we are vilified as cowboy imperialist by most of the other countries that I met. Funny thing I noticed is that a majority, 98% or more, of the American's I met were humble mostly unconfrontational on the subject of American Exceptionalism, or had it beaten into them by the PC education crowd that we aren't. Europeans, particularly Italians and the British Isle folk were the biggest chest puffing, bring the subject out of no where idiots. The Chinese were more ambivalent, there was a sect of Chinese that resented us because all of the Chinese women preferred finding the "rich" Americans to fuck instead of them. I didn't know a lick of Chinese going in or coming out, really expanded my horizons... Shanghai was insanely user friendly for English speakers. There are dozens of websites that help you find directions and activities. Transportation outside of taxis was set up easy as fuck. We'd just take photos of our computer screen with the Chinese script of what ever location or item we wanted otherwise.
I don't remember any government sponsoring. Not sure if they put a big emphasis on foreigners learning Chinese, though they were big on Chinese people learning English. A lot of places let you take their Chinese language courses for free if you taught english for them. Otherwise, you could take college courses pretty fucking cheap or barter private lessons with people who wanted to learn english. Most people learned by dating a Chinese girl.
This is a great thread that I will be watching closely. My time abroad was sponsored by Uncle Sam, and I am of the opinion that that seriously colors the experience.(I am not even counting combat deployments, just garrison stations like Korea, Germany, Italy etc). Please continue, this is a great idea.
I emigrated from what was then the USSR to the US when I was about 10 (this was in 1991). Culture shock is putting it mildly. The accent didn't help, and didn't go away until way into high school. Ranch dressing tastes pretty damn good, though. However, it's yet another reason why Americans are such fat fucks.
Ugh, one of the biggest culture shocks of returning? Walking through Chicago O'Hare and seeing the fat fucking rhino asses this country produces. I had forgot that the human body could take up that much cubic area. It really made me sick.
I just wanted to clarify that I was only in Costa Rica for the summer and am back in New York now, so I don't count. Sadly.
When I went to China for a year, I was teaching at a university, so they set us up with Chinese lessons, but everyone else I met had their students give basic lessons. The only people I ever met who were foreigners(wai-guos) and spoke even close to fluent Chinese were on their 4th or 5th year there, and studying it full-time. the tonal system is a bitch to figure out, let alone writing and the whole radicals thing. I basically gave up after 6 months and just concentrated on learning basic phrases to get me what I needed(pijiou=beer).
Ranch dressing combines the worst part of yogurt, onions and the sock I jerked off in 3 weeks ago and found under the bed. FOCUS: In Honduras, no one spoke English. If I didn't know pretty good Spanish, I would have been muy-fucked. There were no Spanish classes that I saw, because basically, either you hired a "counterpart" who translated for you and drove you around or you knew Spanish. In Indonesia, you can get by with MUCH less Indonesian than other places. Granted, Indonesian is a pretty simple language, but I knew practically none when I arrived, and the only language barrier situations I have run into are dealing with Internet problems and explaining myself to doctors. Classes can be found very easily, and lots of girls will "tutor" you in Indonesian for some cash. As far as perceptions go, it depends. The only constant is they all think Americans are rich beyond imagining and there are two prices: American price and local price. As far as culture shock goes, the first thing that happens to me when I leave the US is I lose about 20 pounds. Some of it's fat, some of it's muscle, but it goes within about 3 months. The second thing to go is your concept of time. People talk about the pace of life, but the biggest thing is it's extremely rare to have a 9-5 job here. Most people "work" in odd jobs like driver, laborer, farmer and they don't have to be anywhere on time. They spend their time bullshitting with their friends, neighbors and family. I cannot emphasize how important it was to shoot the shit with the guys in my office for 4 hours every day in Honduras. They did not do anything unless they had talked about it for 2 hours the day before. Also, if a meeting or a class started at 8, you'd better tell them to be there at 6:30.
Not sure if I count since I immigrated when I was pretty young but I am from Pakistan so I guess I can field questions about that sort of thing. But just to get these out of the way immediately, I am not a terrorist, I don't hate your freedoms, and I don't know why my uncles destroyed the twin towers.
Did you have a lot of issues with being Russian coming out of the cold war? My sister's best friend in high school came over about the same time and age, and in Washington DC she was ostracized, made fun of, and basically prejudice against. You could get suspended for calling a black kid a gangster just because he was black, but you could call this girl "a spy" and all sorts of other cold war/Tom Clancy nonsense and the administration refused to do anything? Did you encounter any problems?
So I know its not like going someplace cool where the language doesn't even resemble yours but about a year ago I moved to the UK. There are a ton of culture shock issues and language confusions. In order to stop conversations getting utterly derailed by silly jokes and what not I have had to adopt certain changes in patterns to speech and vocabulary. For the most part I keep my 'Americanisms'. Little things that I notice. Produce tastes better, cheese and milk taste better. Bread has no preservatives, dough conditioners and high fructose corn syrup is NOWHERE to be found. Its all sorts of fantastic. Even Coke has sugar in it and fucking tastes amazing. There are far less fat people in Europe and most people work out to some degree. That being said you walk everywhere. That was hard to get used to the first week being that I drove everywhere in America. But now I love it. People still want to talk to be about Bush as if I elected him myself, about how our country has ruined the worlds economy as if I had anything to do with that either. They also like to act like Americans can't drink. Please bitch, I lived in Denver for 4 years. I'll outdrink you and your mom. For the most part though the only major difference is that American is not English and English is not American as far as language and culture.