#TellYourStory | I experienced a culture shock when...
The one time I experienced the culture shock was when I moved from Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is an urban area, out to Mebin, North Carolina, which is out in the middle of nowhere. There's literally fields, farms. I lived near a cornfield, and cows. My closest neighbor was two acres over. So that was a very big culture shock. I learned then that I cannot sleep in absolute silence. I am so used to sound of some sort
Rocío (Ro) Christensen
@rocio · 0:50
Yeah. Oh, my God. What a change. I kind of had a similar experience. I used to live in New York, and then I live in Copenhagen now, but sort of on the outskirts, like, near a lake, really quiet residential area. And the first few months, I was like, I can't actually. I feel like it's so silent that I'm starting to hear things that aren't there. Like little I don't know. Little I don't know
louis blasi
@khamsa · 4:49
And we really just went to the market to buy things that we actually needed, not things that we wanted, because the things that we wanted us, fruits and stuff like that, we will have it. So for me, that was a cultural shock to see how people just money, like, it's nothing on what I think now, that it's insignificant stuff like clothing and shoes and material stuff. And I'm like, wow, to me, that was a cultural shock
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
You actually never did get used to it. We ended up moving closer to a city. It was just so hard to get used to that much silence. It's funny how you get used to your surroundings. I mean, I had lived up to my adult life in a setting where there was some kind of noise all the time
She grew up in more wealthy type of settings. So at first I remember her saying that it was a bit scary for her. And she was fluent in Spanish and French. She didn't speak English at that point, but my mom was the one that always wanted to just tackle anything new. So she really dove into ESL. And by the time I was reading and writing, she was teaching me Spanish and English at the same time, even though her English wasn't necessarily perfect
louis blasi
@khamsa · 4:54
And sometimes, maybe it's not just because of that, as the case with your mom or your parents, where perhaps they had a decent life, a modest life over there, but the circumstances, the political circumstances, they were not as good for them and they had to flee. And yeah, obviously you were born and raised here and all that good stuff, but even when you move from one state to another, it's also a cultural shock
And it was fun. It was a way to tap into other people's culture, and that was so fun. And growing up also, my dad was from Puerto Roco ro. He had a lot of friends in the area that were also from Puerto Rico. And in the summer, we would all go to our friend's house. It'd be a cookout. Everyone would bring instruments. And, I mean, it was always people in the backyard singing, playing instruments, kids running around