Culture Shock: Part 2

Part 2 of the article:

When my husband's company offered him a job in China, we jumped at the chance. This would be the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to see the world, a great way to experience a new, exciting and mysterious culture. And get paid for it!

I was really excited. The first thing I did was run down to the local bookstore and buy a whole bunch of books about China, the Chinese people and how to speak Chinese. I even hired a Chinese friend from Taiwan to teach us the language (and whose first lesson of course was to explain that Taiwanese Chinese was completely different from Mandarin Chinese, but fortunately for us he spoke both). We had a whole three weeks to get ready, and ready I was going to be. I would walk like they walked, talk like they talked and think like they thought. I would eat their food (I loved Chinese food!), drink their (warm) Tsingtao beer, dress like they dressed, dance like they danced, learn to sing kari-yucky (karaoke - the Chinese national past-time second only to staring at the foreigners) and sleep on a bamboo-grass mat.

(I can be really naive sometimes.)

I was going to China! Wow.

Things like this just didn't happen to people like me!

Those three weeks flew by, of course, and before I knew it we were getting off a plane in Chengdu, Sichuan. I had not yet figured out that Chinese food in China was not anything like Chinese food in America, and I had not yet developed a taste for warm beer. But I could say hello, thank you and goodbye in Chinese, I was excited and happy to be there, and I was more than ready, willing and able to start my new life in China. The honeymoon wasn't over yet, and I just didn't have a clue.

I can relate to the range of emotions going on in this woman's mind. We were thinking the same thing. We will learn to be Russians in any way we can. We thought we would fit right in. I realized however that the first thing I found was that I missed beef jerky and I wasn't able to switch to fish jerky...just one of the many things that are different. It's a shallow thought but I'm being honest. I can't say I was in deep thought over the cultural differences at first. we are learning to embrace the differences...some are wonderful...and some are annoying. I think it's not so much about becoming a Russian. I will always be a foreigner, no matter how long I stay here. I think it's more about accepting their way of life no matter how different it is.