Traffic:
The first thing I noticed as soon as I landed in the U.S. was the traffic. The vehicles are on the right-hand side of the road in America as opposed to the left in India. Also, there is a strict sense of lanes followed here while there is none back home. And obviously, vehicles are left-hand drive here, but they are right-hand drive in India.
English:
Although I have learned and spoken English all my life, the way it is spoken here is quite different from what I learned back home. Watching all those Hollywood movies as I grew up still fell short of preparing me for this, and it came to me as a mild shock. I confess I initially struggled to catch what people were saying, especially when they talked fast.
Food:
Although I usually make food at home with my roommates - meaning I eat Indian food all the time - whenever I did go out with my roommates or friends, it was hard to find food I liked. Being a vegetarian did not help my cause much, either. Did you know that McDonald's in India has a veggie burger?
Money:
It took me a bit of time to get used to paying in U.S. dollars and not converting every dollar I spent into rupees. Thanks to a 45 rupee Cilantro bundle, I realized that converting the expenses into rupees will end up killing me in less than a week.
Culture:
As long as I was in India, I lived only among Indian people, those who mostly shared my culture and language. When I came to the U.S., things changed. I got to mingle with people from many different countries and cultures, from Asian to Middle Eastern to European to African.
Wal-Mart:
Shopping for everything I basically need to live my life under one roof was a totally new experience to me. This is a recently developing concept back home, and hence I hadn't experienced it until I went shopping for groceries in Manhattan.
School:
The schooling system in the U.S. gives the student much more freedom in picking the courses he or she likes with merely an outline of requirements to be eligible to graduate. The classes are more interactive, and assignments are more challenging. The concept of open book finals blew my mind. The fact that attendance is not mandatory, especially for graduate students, is great.
Lingo:
Words like gasoline as opposed to petrol, interstate as opposed to highway, cab for a taxi, bike for a bicycle, etc., became part of my vocabulary. Although it felt weird using those words to describe the respective items in context, I got used to it pretty quickly.
Safety:
Ever since I arrived in the U.S., I have been introduced to a world of safety precautions. Back home everything is laid-back to the point of being careless. Here there is a strict emphasis on seat belts, speed limits, smoke detectors and fire alarms.
Night Life:
Going out to the bars with friends is a tradition that became a part of my life after I came to the U.S. The amount of exposure to night life has been enormous in my case.
10 cultural nuances found in USA
By Balasubramanyn Meenkshisundaram
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Source :
http://www.kstatecollegian.com/edge/10-cultural-nuances-found-in-usa-1.2535092
