Observations from my 6-Day Culture Jump

I had been expecting a bit of culture shock--I'd been in Chile for 7 months!  But you never know what's going to stick out to you.  I gotta say, walking through Chicago after living in Angol was very strange.  I kept thinking about how my host family or my students would feel if they were there, seeing everything I was seeing.  I wanted to take pictures of every little thing so that I could show it to them when I got back!  And I kind of did that, to show them American wedding traditions, and the windmills on the drive home through Indiana, and all the foliage in my neighborhood and what we had for dinner.  But anyway, these were some of my thoughts:

- first time I thought to myself "woah, that's different," was turning on the faucet and washing my face with hot water.  The second time was my mom putting on 'Blurred Lines' for us in the car.

- Chicago felt almost sterile or something, like we were on a movie set.  I found myself wondering if someone went around every day to clean the sidewalks and manicure the flower beds.  It seemed more like a nice place built for visitors than a place where people actually live (I realize that this is probably true for many parts of downtown Chicago). It was cool, but it made me feel like another visitor in some sort of giant visitor's center. 

- prices are high! I didn't think things seemed that much cheaper here when I first arrived, but going back there seemed to be a huge difference. Maybe it was the fact that I was browsing touristy things in Chicago, but, still.  I realized I was just planning to find some booth vendors on the sidewalk to get the same things, but extra cheap, and they were, of course, nowhere to be seen. 

- wow, we drive all over the place! And everything is so far apart! I spent an entire morning driving around to different parts of the northside of the city, to different stores, my old high school, a bagel shop (oh yes), and a friend's house. It's very different from just walking into the town center and finding everything you need within a few blocks of each other, and enjoying the leisurely walk back, and maybe grabbing an ice cream on the way. On a larger scale, the idea of everybody getting in their own cars to drive to another town or city seems so wasteful compared to the vast network of (good, cheap) bus systems here.  Why don't we have something like that in the U.S.?  On the other hand, I do looove car-singing...

- I was struck by the sheer quantity of things.  I mean both in stores and at home.  We went to a two-story Walgreens, with an entire aisle of cough & cold medicine varieties, and an entire aisle of chip selections, and an entire long wall of cold drink options.  As I type this, I am remembering that that's actually completely normal in most convenience stores in the U.S....but I'm going to carry on. Are they really all so different that you stock every single one of those?  I couldn't tell if I liked that there were so many options or if I was offended by it. It was overwhelming! And at home, in my own room, I was looking around at all my stuff.  The vast majority of it had not crossed my mind in 7 months, but it was all stuff that I had held onto for some reason. I got the urge to do a massive purging of my room, but that will have to wait till December! 

- it was a change for me to be surrounded by a society that speaks my language.  Or I guess I should say it was a change for me to be in my native language society. I don't often run into trouble communicating here anymore, but I am still in the habit of doing a quick review in my head of possible follow-up questions or related phrases before I approach a sales attendant, for example. I found myself still doing that in Indianapolis, and had to snap myself out of it.  Kind of weird to have to give yourself the "Maddie, this is your native language, there is [almost] nothing they say will that you won't understand" pep talk.  

- and finally, it was a delightfully wonderful shock to me to actually be in the presence of my friends and family.  To be sitting next to them instead of skyping or messaging them.  You don't even have to say anything, you can just sit there next to them, because people who are actually in each other's presence can just enjoy each other's presence without keeping up an internet-enabled conversation! That was nice : )