adjustments

resettling into your home culture after having been away for a lengthy period of time is akin, i imagine, to waking up from a coma. everything is, to borrow a popular phrase from thailand, "same same but different." it's not just your environment that's changed - you've changed as well.

in many ways, my first week back to the states feels no different than any other visit home i've made in the past 9 years: i sleep a lot, eat a lot, and generally soak up sun, sales and super-fast internet speed. i think the reality of having moved back to the states for good (for now) won't hit me until a few more weeks, when i would normally be packing up my suitcases again and squeezing in as much time as possible with family and friends. time on american soil, which once felt precious to spare, now feels abundant.

i admit my re-entry so far has been a soft landing. apart from helping my parents pack and prepare to move house, the days have been mostly languid and lazy: lots of naps, home cooked meals, scenes of green hills and blue sky (and the occasional deer or groundhog) from our yard, and sessions of wii fit.

culture shock, however, hasn't been completely absent, particularly in small-town america. a few observations:

- i've been watching some TV - not much, just a little. it's terrible. i can't tell if media is dumbing things down for us or if the american public is getting too dumb to accept anything more intelligent. okay, that might be harsh. but the combination of reality shows featuring people that you'd probably punch in the face if you were to actually meet, lack of shame in baring all your problems and your family's problems for your countrymen to dissect, and ridiculous competitions in which everyone wants to prove they have talent when actually most of them do not.....it almost makes me want to sell our television set.

- there is such a culture of fear. from the news reporting ominous tales of terrorists and disease-ridden foods to commercials that scare you into buying medication, insurance and all sorts of other products that claim to protect, i find myself hyperventilating whenever the TV is on. again, makes me want to just chuck the whole thing out the window.
note: maybe china was like that as well, but i never watched TV in china. i opted to get my news from online western sources, and since i was able to pick and choose the articles i wanted to read, perhaps i didn't feel the bombardment of watching the evening news and having so much tragedy and terror hurled at me.

- everything is so convenient. everything is just a quick drive away, and whatever you want to buy is packaged, processed and neatly prepared so you need only to do minimal work. easy peasy.
on a related note, the amount of junk food cramming the aisles of supermarkets is appalling. i was nearly blinded by the manic packaging colors and the even more manic colors of the foods themselves. (this was also over july fourth weekend, so maybe it was kicked up a notch for the holiday.....)

- everyone is so friendly. gratuitously friendly. and maybe it's small-town america, but freely dispensing too much unnecessary information.

- everyone has an opinion, and dammit, we're entitled to give it. and we're entitled to our rights, and no one is going to tell us differently. case in point: my flight from newark to albany was inexplicably delayed for 2 hours (the flight itself only took less than 45 minutes). the counter agent was not the most informative, but perhaps he wasn't being given that much information either. he was a slightly abrasive middle-aged italian-american man, and he didn't handle the irritated passengers' queries with the smoothest of manners. people did not like that - and they let him know. there was a lot of mouthing back, someone even 'booed', and the woman seated next to me was on her phone instantly, calling continental's customer service and reporting his less-than-satisfactory behavior.

another example - while working out at the gym today, i watched president obama conduct a townhall via twitter. observing our nation's leader having to answer to the people - i've missed that dearly during my time abroad.

- the proverbial belt has definitely been cinched. whereas everything in china is currently geared towards "spend! spend! spend!", there is a noticeable conscious coupon-cutting and penny-pinching culture happening here.

perhaps i've grown more critical over the years as well. things that i accepted as normal almost a decade ago i may now question, viewed through the lens of an outsider.


cups of coffee:  2

mood:  sleepy. naps do not help jetlag.