Reverse/Culture Shock Experience?

[rondachewarrior]

Yeah, Califorina is a cesspool...unfortunately. Because like you said, it's beautiful. But yeah, the homeless epidemic in CA is insane. Epesicially when they learn they can make roughly $100,000 per year just panhandling, and it's legal as long as they pay taxes on it. Or that used to be the case. I'm not from CA so I don't know if the laws have changed.

Lol I went to LA twice and it was enough. Mostly a good experience but I can tell you everybody that's ever traveled there as a tourist hated it. It resembled a KUWTK show and everybody looked the same....bottle blonde, beats headphones, iphones, ipads, iAnything. I made it out with help from my ex and some money at the time.

 

[rondachewarrior]

I was a very nervous person at 16 - extremely socially awkward and very emotionally immature. So whenever I was confronted with a situation that I found difficult, I just shuttered down and went in on myself until it all went away.

Case in point: at passport control, with a gun pointed at me, I just inwardly panicked and couldn't react in a normal way to the security officer so I must have come across as unbelievably suspicious. I was fidgeting and blinking rapidly, looking around everywhere and sweating. My dad is blind, so he is of course oblivious to things like facial expressions and, y'know, firearms in the vicinity, so he was just humming away to himself waiting for the stamp to be put in his passport whilst I was certain we were going to be arrested and thrown in some sort of gulag for the next 15 years.

It happened again when we were trying to cross the road which was at least 4 lanes wide with people driving like absolute lunatics, sometimes on the wrong side. Trying to get my dad safely across the road without getting hit was a pretty stressful exercise! I kind of went into some weird out of body state...I just couldn't cope for an really intense 2 minutes or so.

All of this was compounded by the fact that me and my dad were not especially close for various reasons and so I didn't really know him all that well. So a blind man and a socially inept teenager were perhaps not the best travelling companions!

Everything was such a contrast to the UK - if I get to go back to Russia I would definitely be more confident generally. It's been over 20 years as well, so things have definitely changed and are in many ways more stable. I am less intimidated by life now and I think I'd be more curious than frightened if I saw things that would ordinarily unnerve me.

I probably did commit several faux pas whilst there, but was so utterly unaware of much outside of myself, I have no idea what they were. I would also make more of an effort to learn some phrases too - I think if you're going to another country, the least you can do is try to learn something like yes, no, please, thank you etc.

Failing all that, my Russian stepmother is a formidable woman and I'll just hide behind her whilst she verbally abuses everyone for me. When she's not busy insulting me, of course. Or driving like a mad woman. Or kicking off on the middle east for no apparent reason. She's great but a walking advertisement for political, social and possibly economical incorrectness.

Sorry for the late repy, thought my assignments/essays were due in 1-2 weeks, then the level 4 lockdown happened in NZ, panic ensued, then boredom settled in nicely. Taken 3 days off from revision/proofreading.

That's fairly normal as a teenager, definitely better than how I handled conflict (making it worse).

Either that guard was sadistic or he was socially stunted in his development as a kid, you would think carrying a gun with you all the time that no **** people would be anxious. It's healthy to react in fear or freeze in shock and it's ignorant that alot of people don't understand that.

I'm also on the same boat in regards to daddy issues. I just don't engage in toxicity anymore, comes a time when you're pushing 29 in 2 months and you really can't just accept/take anymore **** (in a HEALTHY way of course).

Learning phrases is also a helpful note, been lost where I couldn't even speak or read in my mother tongue anymore. But many foreigners obtain a get-out-of-jail-free card in Asia (not sure if I've already mentioned that).

I have a friend like your mother hahah, irony is she smokes alot of weed for somebody so short-tempered.

 

[rondachewarrior]

That’s why I let my in-law and her family do all the talking. lol

I’m sure things could have been completely different had we not had her family who lived there with us.


As far as culture shock goes though, @KennedyKiller had a point about different states being very different.
I went to California and while the state itself is beautiful, there’s a lot going on that... well is different. The amount of homeless people that we saw there (granted some of them could have been hipsters) was pretty overwhelming. One of the girls I went out there with had a buddy who said many of the homeless make it a career especially around the holidays where they can apparently really milk it on the streets.
Apparently it is so bad that the state passed a law which allows them to defecate in the streets... which we got to see the aftermath of that on more than one occasion. Also the homeless people there will quickly tell you off if you don’t offer them money.

That entire trip was awful though... sadly the company I went there with ruined the experience. One of the girls I completely cut out of my life following that trip and then the other girls and I just drifted apart.

I was the same except I let my dad do all the talking in Thailand before I moved permanently, then I stopped talking to everybody full stop. Actually did not know that about the homeless people in LA but I know in Thailand there are fake monks that ask for charity which is even worse. Strange coincidence how everybody I've met hates LA (myself included but I was lucky to be around a fairly nice circle).