No need to travel abroad to experience culture shock

When you’re preparing to travel to a foreign country, people warn you that you’re going to… When you’re preparing to travel to a foreign country, people warn you that you’re going to experience culture shock shortly after arriving in your new environment.

This seems pretty normal.

Crossing an ocean or a major political boundary, entering a place where people speak a different language and have a dissimilar heritage and outlook on social customs and norms is sure to take you aback. It’s accepted and expected that you will experience a certain level of confusion, anxiety and disorientation due to contrasts between your home and new surroundings when traveling abroad.

So, why aren’t students warned about culture shock before they go home for holiday break?

For many of us, going home is visiting a foreign country. Living away from home in Pittsburgh — especially Oakland — is an experience wholly unlike growing up with your folks in wherever it is you’re from (even if your folks live in the unkempt district of a medium sized city).

The people are different. Many of them, especially the ones with whom you live, are much older than what you’re used to. In Oakland, the old-heads are highly outnumbered, and most can be placed under the headings “panhandler” and “professor.” At home, they’re simply everywhere — dressing in an alien style that includes the fabled high-waisted jean.

These people speak a different language. They rarely curse (and when they do, it’s usually awkward). They use words like “investment” and “carpool” and “baking.” They don’t understand slang, Internet jargon, or the importance of cell phone text-messaging. They ask you inane, incomprehensible questions like “When will we see your report card?” and “Will you be home for dinner?” and “When’s the last time you washed your sheets?” and “When are you going to visit your grandmother?”

They have strange customs. Unlike your friends who sleep off hangovers ’til the early afternoon and then order a large, greasy pizza so they don’t have to peel their pajama-ed bodies off the couch, these people regularly wake before noon, don expensive-looking suits, and leave the house for eight or nine hours. Around 5 or 6 p.m., one of them usually uses an oven and/or stove to make his or her family a real meal.

Then, after dinner, they don’t call their friends to see where the parties are. They don’t get dressed up and hit the local bar till 2 a.m. Many take naps, watch TV, or read a book for pleasure. They go to sleep before 2 a.m.

Even the people our age — the people we grew up with — are different than our Pittsburgh friends. Many of them preface their strange words with “remember that time in high school,” or they talk about people and places we don’t know. They talk about their spouses, their jobs, or what the rest of the high-school “crew” is doing. That is, if they’re even around to talk.

And to top it all off, a lot of us have to deal with foreign settings in addition to alien people. For those from rural areas, the need to have a car instead of being able to walk or bus everywhere, as well as the need for something constructive to do after 11 p.m. (when everything in the town closes), can be devastating. For those from different climates, the need to wear shorts or an extra jacket instead of the standard Pittsburgh parka gear can be disorienting.

Overall, it’s just shocking. Someone should warn us before break.

That way, we won’t be surprised when our mothers ask us “where are you going?” or “with whom?” or “when will you be home?” We won’t get upset when we realize, at 8 p.m., that short of going to a movie or driving to visit a friend, there is nothing “going on.” We won’t swear at the dinner table. We won’t shovel our dinners like starving animals. We won’t talk loudly on our cell phones about sex (when within earshot).

Or, maybe we will anyway. But at least we won’t be surprised when our parents and grandparents scowl and scold our foreign behavior.