Culture Shock

Whenever you go to a completely new place you get a bit of culture shock. I think even coming home from a long trip you can often experience it as well. When me and Scott Mac went traveling in Europe we started our trip in Amsterdam. I think I remember the most "shocking" things right on arrival to be the language (all hundred of them spoken there), the european style of streets, getting almost killed by cyclists, and the alcohol prices :). We didn't find the red light district until we'd already been in town for a day and a half... we couldn't figure out for the life of us what this so called "red light district" was, or why it was called that ;-).

I've traveled a lot more since then and I still enjoy the "culture shock" when arriving to a new place. In New York I talked to a couple people who were just so totally rude to me I could do nothing but laugh... I don't think that helped the situations either though :).

I think maybe formally culture shock is defined differently... but I mostly just use it to describe anything that's different that catches me off guard.

The phone system is always one of them, everywhere phones work differently, they have different tones and different rules when calling (for example, unless you have a special plan, land lines can't call cell phones in argentina). Sometimes even the pay phones them self are quite different.

In my opinion, North Americans eating habits and food are quite tame. Liver is probably the grossest looking thing you'll get in a supermarket.

I cooked up the bottom left one for Sam and myself, goes great with some garlic butter.

Buenos Aires is a very European city, the streets and buildings all have that feel. I still always feel like I'm going to get hit by cars when walking across the street... need to fight your way through the crosswalks even. Probably doesn't help that our apt is on the corner of one of the major intersections here.

It's a really great city, weather has been awesome too... these people just need to learn to speak English!