The topic of culture shock has come up a few times recently. Honestly, it isn’t something that is addressed all that often in Foreign Service blogs from what I’ve seen. Sure, people talk about the funny food or how bad the drivers are or the packs of wild dogs in the streets, but those are more like colorful anecdotes. True culture shock is something deeper and more subtle.
Although we have traveled in Europe before and also throughout Southeast Asia, we were hit with culture shock much harder when we first arrived in Kyiv. A large part of that was accepting that sinking feeling that we live here now. There is no easy running away if we decide we don’t like something. Sure, we eat out plenty, but we still need to find places to buy groceries. Connecting to the internet, going to a bank, or finding a wrench turn into day-long projects. Apart from the mullets and stilettos, people in Kyiv don’t look that much different from us. It isn’t until you need to try and talk to someone that you realize how different they are. Even if they do speak English — and most of them don’t — they just don’t get what you’re trying to say. Even my Ukrainian co-workers, who are exposed to Americans every day, can be difficult to communicate with times. It isn’t a language problem, it is a cultural one.
We had to ask what to do with this internet bill that we received. “You take it to the bank and pay it.” To the Ukrainian that is obvious. However, when I try to explain that in America it doesn’t work that way I either get a blank stare or, even worse, the acknowledgment that, yes, things are much better in America. This isn’t what I’m trying to get them to understand. I just want to point out that I’m not as stupid as I may seem, I just don’t know how their system works. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking all of your bills to the bank to pay them (although it is kind of annoying), but I have no way to know that is what I’m supposed to do.
I’m sitting here trying to think of a good example of what cultural norms we take for granted in the States and I can’t think of one. Why? Because that is just the way it is. That is how people think in every country and we need to learn figure these idiosyncrasies out. This is the true heart of culture shock.
Learning how to avoid oncoming cars on the sidewalk and that you shouldn’t touch the strange monkey isn’t culture shock — that is part of the wonder of travel. Discovering that if you stand in the wrong place on the bus that you somehow become the person who collects the money or that if you enter a restaurant full of empty tables for four and you only have two people and therefore can’t eat there, that is culture shock.
Tags: Culture Shock
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May 24, 2007 at 12:48 pm
mc-lyte
Shawn, I’m just finding your blog and am happy to see that I have hours of catching up to do. I like the distinction you make between culture shock and the wonder of travel. Sometimes the lines between the two can blur, or more accurately, shift, I imagine.
I found that I honestly offended my Turkish friends for not calling them back in the 2-hour window I later found you have after getting a call on your cell phone. No voice mail, the phones didn’t have voice mail. I’d try to explain how this was so different from my US cell phone experience, where you often, if not usually leave messages. Sure, they understood but didn’t accept it, exactly. I was simply a bad friend.
So, mullets and stillettos, eh? Ah, so the 80’s live! Rock on.
-M
May 26, 2007 at 3:01 am
Josh
I predict the following:
Shawn: OK, how about if we pay for four meals, but only eat two?
Waiter: No, we don’t do that.
Shawn: OK, how about if we pay for EIGHT meals, but only eat two?
Waiter: No, we don’t do that.
Shawn: I’m offering you four times the money. Why don’t you do that?
Waiter: Because that’s not what we do.
Shawn: OK, may I please speak to the manager or owner?
[Moment passes]
Manager: How may I help you?
Shawn: We’d like to eat here, please, and we’re prepared to pay four times the price of our two meals in order to eat here.
Manager: No, we don’t do that.
Shawn: Why not?
Manager: Because that’s not what we do.
[Shawn runs screaming into the night]
May 27, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Yareyare
I totally know what you mean. The American ideal of “Your Way, Right Away” is just so foreign to many other cultures. But there’s always something admirable, so I try to focus on those things. Like I can pay my bills at the convenience store, which is, of course, quite convenient.
May 29, 2007 at 8:09 am
Michele
I remember when I learned phone bills, cable bills, whatever bills were paid at… ShoeMart. I don’t necessarily think of a shoe/department store as the place to pay bills, but in Manila, that was the norm.
Or the Yes Man response to every request and inquiry. No matter what, everything was answered in the affirmative. Whether it was true, whether it was possible, whether it existed, none of that mattered. Only what we apparently “wanted” to hear was what we were told.
Yeah, culture shock.
May 30, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Slip
HA!
Just be thankful that the lines are not what they used to be and the bank no longer sends you to the ministry and the ministry to the bureau and the bureau back to the bank.
Keep the stories coming. I love it!
June 2, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Laura
Well put. A lot of this is brought into focus through language, too. When another language doesn’t have a word for something we say frequently or vice versa, there is a significant message there. Sometimes when I want to express myself in Czech I find that even with the right vocabulary I can’t say exactly what I want to say: the language just doesn’t accomodate my cultural thought. Love that! But how frustrating…