What’s the biggest culture shock you ever experienced?

1. My parents were the typical asian kind, hard to please and difficult to impress. When I graduated class valedictorian for 6th grade, my mother complained that i did not recieve any other award like best in science or best in math... When I fell down the ranks of top students (i was still in the top 10 though). My father told me that the reason he stopped attending school events was because he was ashamed of me. When my elder sister got pregnant a couple of months before graduating med school, my mom stopped talking to her for a month. They lived across the hall from each other. Unforgiving of failures... that was the kind of parents that we had. When my girlfriend took her licensure exam for accountancy for the first time, she failed the test. I was with her when she told her parents about it. To this day i still remember the shock I felt for what transpired that day. We were seated in her dorm me beside my girlfriend and opposite us were her parents. She was finding it difficult to confess and when the words "i failed" finally came out the first thing her father said were "that's ok". Then my girlfriend started crying and her parents consoled her they were hugging and giving her words of encouragement, assuring her everything will be allright and that the thing to do is to move forward and try again. I just sat there watching them and feeling envious, thinking this is what parents should be doing for their children. It came as a total shock to me this level openess and understanding.This kind of parent-child relationship was alien to me. I promised myself that if i were to become a father I would be like her parents. I dont hate my parents though, they werent bad people, they just had ridiculously high expectations of their kids. My siblings and I had a happy childhood for the most part. Sometimes we would sit and talk about how crazy our parents are and laugh a lot :)
   — Kusinero


2. Recently moved to the US (9 months ago), and I am still not used to everyone asking me how I am doing. I am from Norway, and if the cashier ask how you are, you get embarrassed and don’t know how to answer.
   — lasseft


3. When I was a kid one of my mother's friends was a woman from a very tough background who had left her husband because he used to hit her and her children. She had three kids and was living in a two-bedroom council flat in a tough part of Glasgow. My mum met her because they were both doing part-time university degrees as mature students. She was studying to get a teaching qualification. I became friends with one of this woman's kids when I was about 6 or 7. I'd go over to his house for the night sometimes and we'd generally wander around the local neighbourhood just doing what kids do. He always carried a rucksack and was always on the lookout for empty glass soda/alcohol bottles. If he saw one, he'd grab it and stick it in the rucksack. After a while I started bringing a rucksack along when I visited so we could double up on glass-bottle-carrying-capacity. The reason he did this was that, in Glasgow back then, a sort of proto-recycling scheme meant that every one of those bottles was redeemable for 5p at any shop that sold them. They'd collect them, give out 5p per bottle, send them off to be recycled, and be reimbursed for their time by the local government. We'd collect a bunch of these then, when we went back to the flat in the afternoon, my friend would proudly hand over a few quid in coins to his mother. He used to do this constantly and it meant - this being the 1980s - a decent little earner to help pay for a bit of the household expenses and so on. I came from a family with a detached house in the suburbs that had two cars, two parents, two nice holidays a year, and no real worries when it came to money. Not rich, just lucky to be standard middle class. Meanwhile this woman was raising 3 children by herself while studying to become a teacher, in a tiny little damp flat in a bad part of town. She never asked her son to do what he did, he just took it upon himself aged 7 or whatever to go out and do it. It took me a while to understand what was happening but, once I did, I can honestly say it was one of the defining events of my life.
   — matty80






4. I am Thai, my collgueas are from Argentina and Spain. I eat lunch at 12.30hrs and they are shocked. And the fact that for them lunch is at 16.00 is too crazy for me.
   — mozzimo


5. Holidaying in Tokyo and watching 5 year old kids walk themselves home from school and catching public transport...all by themselves.
   — -pewpewpew-


6. Came to NYC and located a good British chippy in lower Manhattan. Bought sausage chips and gravy, would be about 3-4 quid back home. The British guy behind the till managed to keep a straight face as he charged me $20.
   — BlueLantern84






7. How New Yorkers can be simultaneously polite and rude - it's fairly impressive
   — Locheil


8. I was born and raised in Peru but left for the U.S. in my early twenties. Despite things being far from rosy at the beginning, I was mostly pleasantly shocked: Drivers would stop for me if I was coming close to a street corner, kids 18 years old were getting their own places with a friend or girlfriend, weed smoking was so common place, I could make in an hour of fast food work what I would in a day back at the ol' birthplace. People were generally nice and polite, and they smile more often to strangers. Also, 2 two-inch bulletproof glass at the counter at a KFC in Pennsylvania and they gave you your food via a revolving tray window. Moved down to Florida and oh man, all that open space and beautiful houses. Everyone has a car, my family could never afford one growing up so I didn't even know how to drive. Supermarkets were fancy and no one asks you to show your receipt when you are leaving, just in case you are stealing something. Got a job a golf resort, busser at a nice brunch place. So. Much. Food. My typical breakfast was two pieces of bread with margarine spread and instant coffee, scrambled eggs were like for Sundays. These rich fucks be having Mimosas and Eggs Benedict? Pancakes the size of dinner plates? WITH chocolate chips? Is this Narnia? Bathrooms in fancy hotels. I would often start redesigning the place in my mind to turn it into my room. Back at the beginning I was jut fascinated with Walmart. EVERYTHING in the known universe is available, and often stuff and brands I considered rather in the luxury category would be cheaper than they were in Lima. After twelve years I was recently forced to move back to Peru. I am convinced drivers are actually trying to kill me, everything is fenced and I can't get a job that would cover my room's rent plus food and transportation. No one cleans after their dogs, that one really bugs me. The biggest shock of all is how much of an alien I feel like, even worse than when I first moved to the U.S. Sure makes me appreciate my time there a lot more. Edit: Thanks for all the support Reddit! You guys totally made my day.
   — Groundbreakingthrow


9. I was born in Hawaii and lived on the Big Island until I was six. Little me was used to wearing flip flops (or no shoes) and light weight dresses, swim suits and shorts and a tee-shirt everywhere. It was too hot for anything else, or it would just get dirty. Cut to my family moving to Ontario, Canada about 3 hours North of Toronto. My dad was working in the vacation business so we moved to an actual ski resort for the first few months. My sister and I were enrolled in Catholic school and suddenly I had to wear clothes. But not just clothes: stockings, jumpers, shirts with too many buttons and shoes that had to shine. Coats, hats, gloves, different shoes to wear outside. Six year old me could not comprehend any of this. We even had to change for gym and then change back. My mom helped me put my stockings on in the mornings, but after gym I would have to put them on by myself. One day my teacher called my mom to come get me because I decided to start some sort of anti-clothing revolution and was jumping around the changing room in my underwear with my stockings on my head. TLDR; moved from the Big Island of Hawaii to Canada at 6 and suddenly had to wear a lot of complicated clothing.
   — khaleesiofkitties






10. So I’m norwegian, but I went to New Zealand for a year. The culture shock for me was how open kiwis talk, and how there’s no such thing as stranger danger. And as a typical norwegian introvert, it took a while to get used to. I’d meet a stranger and they’d be breaking the touching barrier right away and start talking about their cousin’s rash and all their weekend plans. Even bigger shock returning to silent Norway.
    — kantartist


11. Trying to cross the street in Hanoi, Vietnam. You can spot somebody who just got in a mile away because the look of apprehension and confusion on their face as they try to figure out how to do it. There are very few crosswalks with 'walk' signs. In most places you look for a gap in the traffic and go. In Bangkok you just make sure the flow of traffic would have time to stop before they hit you and you just go and maintain a constant pace. In Hanoi (especially near the French quarter) you just slowly walk into traffic. There are no gaps. You can sort of put your hand out to let people know you're going, but you just kind of maintain a slow, inching, walking pace and traffic will part around you. Scary AF the first time.
    — Astrospud3