- Reflect on the Culture Shock video and your own experiences and expectations of culture shock
I easily found some common experiences that I also had on the video. The professor in the video defined cultural shock as something you feel you are not belong there and want to go back to your home country. I think it is little extreme but I did feel I do not belong to some communities in America when I first saw different attitude towards people and different life styles. I thought I was open minded person, but still I was not free from cultural shock. I think because I feel I am not a majority in this society, it become careful on my behavior or words. I totally understood the international student who said he did not talk for a long time because he felt like he was wasting other people's time because he spoke English slowly. I felt less confident in the class in my freshman year, too so I had hard time getting used to ask questions and discuss in the class.
One time, I typed "Let's do BS" on group chat and I meant BS, bible study. I got embarrassed when my friends told me it stands for a curse word. There were several times that I was shocked because I did not know some abbreviations and numbers that represent something else. I also did not understand why people judge me using utensils when I eat pizzas, and some finger food. I was eating french fries with a fork in Minnesota and my friends from there were staring at me in weird faces and said we do not use forks for french fries. In addition, transportation system in America was surprisingly inconvenient that I felt less independent in America because I had to ask for a ride to go somewhere.
Actually, the most shocking thing for me was that people do not use an umbrella when it snows!! I always bring my umbrella in the snow in Korea but my American friends said they never use umbrella for snow. I think Korean people care about getting their face and clothes wet more than Americans do. And the clothes they were during the winter are different from Americans, and they don't usually have jackets that have little caps on the top, they might prefer to use umbrellas under the snow. From those shocking experiences, I learned these little daily lives can be really differ from country to country.
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