Is it weird being back in America?
“Is it weird being back in America?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. “Not…really.” Adjusting to Stateside norms was pretty easy; I did grow up here, after all. I can handle silverware and I never picked up the spitting thing anyway. But as the last month has passed I’ve noticed a couple ways in which I am still adjusting after all.
Number One: crossing the street. In 90% of the world, moving around on the street is based on the principle of not making any sudden moves or changes of direction. If you can estimate everyone else’s trajectory, you can move around them.
To cross the street overseas: start walking into traffic, not fast, not slow, no sharp directional adjustments. If possible, walk straight at the back of a passing car. It will continue moving, so when you reach it you will slide right into the space it just vacated. Continue this until you’ve Froggered your way across the street.
It’s similar to the way you don’t try to avoid the cockroaches, just trust that they’ll avoid you.
But in America, if you do this, all the cars on the street do something extremely unexpected in the global mind: they stop. Or if not, they slow down and wave you across. Now, instead of sliding unobtrusively through traffic, you are blocking it. Dangit, Americans, stop being so polite!
So I have had to go back to obeying formal traffic rules. It’s weird.
Number Two: I rarely planned anything more than a day or two in advance for the past few years. I would reach a town and stay there until I was done, during which time I’d hear about some other place within a six/seven hour bus ride. Go. I am not an itinerary sort of guy. But here, this means I don’t get out much, since everyone else has social calendars booked weeks in advance.
Me: “Hey, you wanna do something?”
Friend: “Sure! Let’s get sushi! When works for you?”
Me: “How about tonight?”
Friend: “I’m booked until January.”
I gotta get the hang of that. Anyone want to go get sushi…in January?
And finally, there’s Image. I’ve made a career out of trying to resist this, probably as a means of coping with my lack of fashion passion (as my closet of blank-ass clothes will attest), but my skills were honed overseas. In Nicaragua they described my sandals as “Jesus shoes” and I kept wearing them. In Sri Lanka I sewed up the entire left side of my shorts with the wrong color thread and thought no more about it. In Myanmar I could not have cared less when it was a woman’s style bicycle I rode.
I brought that all home with me. The friend moving out of my new room offered to loan me her woman’s style bike and I accepted, no worries, who cares if people think I look silly? It’s a bike. That ended up not working out, so I have my manly man ride after all, but whatever, it’s shruggalicious.
And I had to smile in the grocery store as I bought a big bag of toilet paper, thinking about how poop-phobic Americans are, and remembering confessions of people who were humiliated to buy the stuff. “I buy it at Cosco in gigantic packs so that I don’t have to do it very often.” Whatever! I’m not embarrassed by anything!
But on the walk home, toilet paper casually under my arm on the busy street, I saw a bag of clothes hangers on the sidewalk. I inherited four hangers with the closet, but I now had seven shirts, with premonitions of more to come. I needed hangers. And here was a bag full of them, free on the sidewalk. We’re also an intensely germaphobic nation, but the odds these hangers were actually infected and infested, scabies, hepatitis, bed bugs? Very slight.
But I walked right on past. What would people think if I was rummaging through the garbage on the street?
Oh.
Damn. That’s disappointing.
It’s weird being back in America.
hahah I definitely understand some of those. I would have probably still grabbed a couple of hangers though.
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I think you’re right. : ) I ended up hearing about a friend moving out of town though, so biked three hours across the city to pick up a backpack full of them, so I’m set to go. Now my closet actually looks worse than before, with all those empty hangers!
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I remember finding it weird that we (Australians) have so much useless lawn, and resisting the urge to turn into a Japanese Obaachan and vegetable patch the hell out of my parent’s yard. Or a least a string of edamame…
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Hahahaha I had the same argument with my parents when I came back. Lawns are ridiculous! Especially in California, it’s a desert for crying out loud, we just pretend not to realize that. I would love to grow my own food. I inherited a couple scrawny tomato plants, and I’m hoping I can keep them alive…
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mmm, it’s getting colder now (though Cali might not be) so I don’t like your chances – but next year you can always try again ^^
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I still think you should come to Japan btw, and use an English teaching job as a springboard for more long-term in country or Asia travelling. The school I work at doesn’t need teaching degrees for kindergarten teachers and is less like English conversation, than just normal English lessons back home.
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Whew, I’m not sure I could handle kindergarteners! I enjoyed having a blend of adult and youngsters, but I’ve never tried it with pupils that young. Scary little creatures. I’d love to come visit one of these years though!
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Pfft, no way. Kindergarten kids are easy! I have mine on a scale from ninja to dinosaur, and when the arrow starts heading down towards dino they shape up. You can do that with older kids 😛 Their reasoning is really funny too. Why can’t fish live outside of water? Because… they have no toes, of course. I love kindy kids ^^
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“I have mine on a scale from ninja to dinosaur.” That sentence alone has made this whole internet thing worthwhile. If I ever make it to Japan, and you’re still there, I would love to come see your class, and hopefully not be a bad dinosaur-moving influence.
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“But in America, if you do this, all the cars on the street do something extremely unexpected in the global mind: they stop.”
You grew up on the West Coast, didn’t you?
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Hahahaha Yup. How can you tell? I used to complain about how rude drivers were, but see it in a different light now (although of course there are still plenty of vehicu-cidal maniacs around). The summary as I give it to foreigners who ask is that East Coasters are the harshest and most remote, West Coasters less so, but to get the really accessible and friendly folks you have to leave the beach states and head inland (except New Orleans). Would you agree?
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Re agreement of your characterization of the regional friendliness index in the United State4s…I guess that’s true, though it’s something of a generalization, of course.
Here’s a story for you about regional differences in how drivers deal with pedestrians. A few years ago I was driving the Coast Highway in Oregon and I went through Newport. At that point I was driving, there were SIX lanes (three on each side of the road). I was in the right-hand lane heading south. As I was driving, someone on the other side of the street stepped into the first lane–so they were five lanes away from the one I was in–in the middle of the block. Since the only risk this jay-walking pedestrian had of being hit by me was to move at the speed of light, I kept driving. The guy screamed a blue streak at me for not stopping (even though it would have taken him a half minute to cross the street).
I grew up in Baltimore, Boston and Chicago, and have spent all of my adult life in the Midwest. If I had stopped in this part of the country in that situation I would have been rear-ended by anyone driving behind me and cited by the cops for causing an accident. In Newport, Oregon you get yelled at by some yahoo for the same action.
It’s a strange world we live in.
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In my mind, I re-titled this: “Just a head’s up for what it’ll be like when you come home.” great post……as always 🙂
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That’s probably a better title, I like it. And I’m pleased as a peach if you’ve been reading my blog time to time. It looks like yours is gone though? Safe travels!
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So interesting to hear about other cultures. I’ll have to tell my husband – who has started working in Mexico – about the crossing the street strategy.
My brother spent a year and a half in Korea and when he came back he actually did experience some culture shock. He was shocked by cold drinks and red tomato juice. And he thought I had lightened my haircolor. And everything looked like it had been cleaned up — the whole city. He was more surprised when he got back because he was expecting things to be strange and unusual in Korea. He hadn’t expected things to seem strange and unusual when you got back home.
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That’s precisely the surprise I’me experiencing, glad to hear I’m not the only one. I think before I left I was pretty down on America, then at first that got worse, when I got to Europe and could leave my bike unlocked on the street (Denmark), there was great mass transit, and people were not nearly as scared of everything and seemed more open-minded. But gradually I came back around and felt more positive about the US than I did before, but obviously with massive exceptions (this shameful government closure is the perfect case in point). We’re just so wonderfully diverse…and so frustratingly varied!
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I always pick things up off the street if they look handy. I’d have been all over those hangers. I find as soon as I get home from travelling it isn’t long before I feel like I never left, though I tend to go away for months, not years. I do remember thinking how expensive food was in Australia after I returned from living in London though and it took me a few days after getting back from Central Amercia to stop saying gracias. How long were you away for?
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I was in the country earlier this year, it was a six month trip this time, far shorter than expected, but this is the first time I’ve really felt like I lived here since 2008. How long have you been back?
I remember picking up an “Ab Roller” off the street in college, and feeling a little trepidation about its cleanliness, overshadowed by sad commiseration for whoever bought it and had given up. That sounds sadder than I mean it to.
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