Although I wasn't able to view the "Culture Shock" video, due to technical difficulties, I still wanted to write about the experience of culture shock and how it has impacted my life. When I was in second grade, my parents and I moved from Wollongong, Australia, to Tucson, Arizona. Though Australia and the United States are very similar countries, there was still a significant enough difference for me to experience culture shock as a young child.
I remember some traumatic (for a seven-year-old) events happening when I first started school in America. In elementary school, the teacher would write sentences that were grammatically incorrect on the board and we would have to correct the grammar by going up to the board. On the first day I started school, I volunteered to correct the sentence at the board. I vividly remember telling my teacher that the sentence needed a "full stop" at the end. The teacher shook her head and replied that a period was necessary. Having no idea what a period once, I indignantly repeated that, no, the sentence needed a full stop, but the teacher said I was wrong. Frustrated over the communication barrier and convinced that I was right, I went back to my seat almost in tears. Other second-grade tragedies included failing a spelling test that included words like "favorite" and "color," which I knew were spelled with a "u," struggling with slang like being asked to "scoot over," and being teased on the playground for my weird accent, which I eventually lost to blend in with my classmates.
Though these experiences upset me as a child, in retrospect they were mostly harmless, and insignificant compared to the culture shock that others face. First, even though I was in a new country, my new peers spoke basically the same language, minus pronunciation and some vocabulary. I was also only seven years old, and had plenty of time to adapt to my new country. I didn't have to struggle to learn a new language or a radically different culture, but even then I had some trouble at first. I can hardly imagine the hardships someone must encounter coming from a completely different country, not speaking the language or knowing the culture at all, and usually alone, like my mom when she left Iran and went to England at eighteen by herself, barely speaking English. I have so much respect and awe for people like her (and the people in the video, even though I could not view it) for being able to accomplish so much.
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