Just returned from a three-week trip back to the U.S. to visit friends and family. I'm now waiting for the jet lag to kick in. If it's anything like what I experienced when I went there, I'm in for a brutal week.In addition to the jet leg, I experienced a bit of culture shock. I was not really expecting that to happen, as it's only been six months or so since I left. Can one's perspective really change that much in such a short time? Apparently it can!
One big shock was being able to understand what everyone around me was saying. Here in Hong Kong, the Cantonese conversation in my environment is just white noise, blending in with the other street sounds. It becomes quite easy to ignore people if you can't understand what they say, even if they are shouting into their mobile phones while standing right next to you on the train. But in the States, I was suddenly able to understand everything. You'd think that this is a good thing, but instead it became overwhelming. Starting on the final leg of my flight (from Chicago to Minneapolis), I was uncontrollably listening in on every conversation around me. I realized that I had lost my ability to tune people out, which drove me crazy because there are simply many things about other people that I don't want, or need, to know.
My other cultural surprises centered around size. Without my noticing it, I had become used to the smaller, more cramped dimensions of Hong Kong. Everything in the States is really big in comparison. It was great fun rediscovering things like giant, luxurious SUVs (one friend has a Lincoln Navigator, of all things) and eight-lane highways. Also, restaurant booths that are so big they could easily seat a party of ten in Hong Kong, but are made for four people in the States. Then Andy and I went to a Super Target store and went a little crazy over the economy-sized packages of... well, everything. No wonder you need an SUV; you'd have a tough time fitting your purchases from a big shopping trip into a Hong Kong taxi. And I'd forgotten how big the stores themselves are, built like a hangar for a 747, with aisles as wide as a garage.
Bigger certainly means better when it comes to appliances, too. The refrigerators seem to me so wide and tall, you could park a whole side of beef in them, while in my Hong Kong fridge I have to lay water bottles on their sides to get them to fit. Then there are the ovens, and how sometimes you can have two of them in one kitchen. And I never thought I'd say something like this, but I covet my brother's washer and dryer. The washer can do a heck of a lot more than five kilos of clothes (my weight limit). The dryer not only makes clothes genuinely dry, it also makes everything so soft and fluffy, I just want to curl up inside it and go to sleep. I think it's big enough for me to do that, actually.
Now here's the really nice thing about a big country: huge, open natural spaces, like in the photo above. It was taken while boating on a lake in Wisconsin. Being there gave me a kind of peace that is completely opposite to my current urban existence: no crowds, clear, trash-free water; clean air, and an open blue sky full of clouds. I'd almost forgotten what that was like.
Posts
