OK so I definitely didn’t think reverse culture shock was a REAL thing.
Like, what do you mean reintegrating back into U.S. society will be jarring, hard and strange? I spent 30 years here! How uncomfortable can it be?
Um, well, turns out, it CAN be hard.
I guess I’m not really getting the FULL reverse culture shock experience, because everything is locked down and we’re all in quarantine. But, there are just a few strange, minor experiences of reverse culture shock I’ve experienced since getting back to the U.S. a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share.
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People here are rude. They’re efficient, and rude. When our flight landed in Washington, D.C., we all had to go through immigrations and customs. We were all delirious and sleep-deprived after our week-long evacuation. We had all been sleeping in hotels and on floors and on airplanes with each other. We were also in the middle of one of the most traumatic experiences of our lives. So, naturally, we were all a little loopy.
Couple that with the fact that we were ALL used to living a slow and friendly Ukrainian way of life?
When we got to security, I was generally shocked at how rude and no-nonsense the border control officials were. Like, they were legitimately YELLING at us to hurry up, move faster, etc. I mentioned at the beginning of my service that Ukrainians run on flexible time and they’re more partial to human relationships than efficiency, but I honestly didn’t even realize I’d become accustomed to the slower way of living until border control was literally screaming at me to move faster, move faster because I was sleep-deprived and trying to get by bearings.
Hearing English. WOW THIS WAS JARRING! The first time I overheard a conversation out in public was when I was grocery shopping at Meijer. It felt… wrong! I felt like I was listening into a private conversation that I shouldn’t be privy to. It was just two store employees discussing something menial — honestly I was so shocked that I forget what they were talking about — but it was just so uncomfortable to understand them perfectly. I do speak Ukrainian, but not fluently, so I miss out on a lot of conversational context. I have to actively work to translate and understand Ukrainian when I’m out in public — which is a lot of work — so I got used to just tuning out the Ukrainian conversation half the time because it was easier. Plus, a lot of Ukrainians speak Russian out in public anyway, so half the time, even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop.
And — seeing English signs! And English product labels! All in English! Brands that I grew up familiar with looked almost foreign the first few times I saw their logos.
Technology. One of my first days back, my sister told me to help myself to coffee. I went into her kitchen and just stared at her espresso machine for a good few minutes. She finally figured out that something was wrong and came over, and asked why I was blankly staring at it. I had to explain that my coffee maker in Ukraine — a 20-year-old rust-covered Soviet-era Moka pot with a splintering wooden handle that needed to be assembled before every use — didn’t use electricity and I was really confused. I also forgot that apps are such a huge thing here, which leads to…
The lack of human contact. You can order things online in Ukraine, yes, but that online order is followed by a phone call. It doesn’t matter if you’re ordering from Rozetka or Domino’s. Your online order will be followed up by a phone call. Rather than sending you an email or putting a flag up on your mailbox, the post office will call you to let you know you have mail. Ukrainians are so social and love talking on their phones. When I placed an order for Chipotle delivery on Grubhub the second I was back in the States, I was caught off-guard when it just arrived, and my delivery wasn’t preceded by a “did you actually mean to place this order, and happy whatever unofficial holiday today is” call.
The endless choices. Thanks, capitalism! I became so used to grocery shopping at small markets and buying non-branded products directly from vendors that my first experience in the cereal aisle of Meijer completely overwhelmed me. No joke, I had a panic attack and had to call my best friend for help. Why do we have so many boxes of cereal?! Why are there SO many options?! It was all so overwhelming! Also, I get to choose an entire cuisine style for dinner?! What?! I got so good at ignoring my Mexican food and Indian food cravings and picking between borscht or potato soup that I completely forgot that the menu in the U.S. is practically endless. It’s so overwhelming. I’m definitely grateful to have access to fresh out-of-season produce again, but I ate the same dinner (nachos) every single night (minus the night I ordered Jet’s and the night I ordered tacos) for my first two weeks back because I was just so overwhelmed by the options.
And then finally, the little things. United States currency looked SO strange to me for a good few weeks after months of handling Ukrainian cash. The U.S. is a mostly cashless society at this point — versus Ukraine where I conducted multiple cash transactions daily — so U.S. currency looked almost fake the first time I saw it after months of forgetting about it. Also, U.S. electrical outlets were weird. I tried to plug my European charger into an outlet in our hotel when we first got back to D.C., and it took a few moments of me staring at it (back to that sleep deprivation thing) for me to realize that something was off. Also, our roads here in the U.S. are so nice! Also… ice is a thing! The first time I made iced coffee I just combined cold brew and oat milk, and my sister was like “where are the ice cubes?” I was honestly embarrassed to admit that I completely forgot ice was a thing that we routinely use here in the U.S.
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So, that’s been my reverse culture shock experience over the last month. Like I said, I haven’t really gotten the full experience because of all the COVID closures, so I’m kind of reintegrating into a distilled version of America. It’ll be interesting to see if anything else catches me off guard as society opens back up and life goes back to normal.
This post was originally published Jan. 24, 2021. Its timestamp has been updated to better reflect the timeline of my Peace Corps service.
