Since I am not a native born American, I was fascinated by too many new cultures when I arrived to US five years ago. I found many unusual and different culture shocks in New York and outside the City. It was time for me full of observations and new discoveries. For example, when I was invited to Birthday Party a week later since I arrived to US, I found out that this is a bad luck when you give somebody as a gift odd number of flowers; however, in our country it was a good sign. It was unusual for me to celebrate Baby Shower, for instance, before baby is born, because in our country this is a bad sign. A new culture shock was for me a swiping metro card in the busses. In our country we do not swipe a card we just show it to a controller, a person who checks bus cards. In case if you don’t have a bus card you can pay cash to controller inside of the bus. The biggest shocks for me were following features:
a) Paying taxes when you buy something?????!!!!!! We don’t do that in our country.
b) Amish people in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. I was shocked the way these people live without technology, cars, electricity. It is a sin for them to take a picture of them that’s why we were told to put away all our cameras and phones.
I found too many different cultures that differ from my own in this country and can talk about that days and nights. I appreciated my American friends who taught me how to adopt to this country. My adaptation was very fast and now I know what to expect in the most situations; however, I am still learning new things almost every day.
