Reverse Culture Shock

Reverse culture shock is real. It is what us ex-patriots experience when we re-enter our first culture. I went overseas several times in college and experienced it then, but I never went overseas for for years at a time, just months. The really "hard to deal with" culture shock comes much later, but these are my first impressions so far.

1. American is so diverse! We cannot stop staring at all the people of different ethnicities. I think that AB believes she is Asian since at home everyone except for her parents are Asian. It is great!

2. From my perspective, people are so much more polite in the US. I have missed male chivalry! In America men I do not know have held the door open for me. People apologize when they bump into me. Also, other than those nasty kids at the movie theater, no one has cut in front of me in a week. Wow.

3. For the most part, it is much much more clean. I am no longer the only person washing my hands in the public restrooms, and everyone is using soap! I have not seen snot rockets, adults picking their nose, adults cleaning out their ear with their fingernails, flying lugies, and so far no one has defecated in public. The servers at the restaurants have washed their hands, and most importantly WE CAN DRINK THE TAP WATER!!! Even after a week here I still cringe inside whenever I fill my cup from the tap, but I just keep telling myself "it is okay."

4. Ummm...I am a little out of place in the US. Today when at Chipoltle KB and I walked off without bussing our table. Thankfully our family caught it and took care of us, but in Asia we are not supposed to buss our tables. Gosh, that would have been rude of us.

5. I get to use my credit card for purchases that are not just online. In Asia we have to carry around a huge wad of cash everywhere, and I have a constant fear that I will not have enough at the grocery store and I will have to explain (not in English) that I need to return part of my purchase because I do not have enough money. This is especially embarrassing because everyone is watching me anyways, and because most of our cashiers like to yell out how much we spent to appease everyone's curiosity.

6. In the US I think a lot of young girls have lame fathers and mothers who do not realize how trashy their daughters look. Some of the "clothes" I have seen the young girls wearing here in the US cover just about as much or less skin than that of the prostitutes in our lovely Asian hometown. The amount of unnecessary skin that young "ladies" show in the US has always shocked me when I have returned from a more conservative country. I am not saying all shorts or tank tops are bad, but if the shorts could double as panties and if the top leaves nothing to the imagination, then yes it is bad. Put on some clothes hoochie mammas.

7. What is up with all the teenage mothers? I am 100% pro-life, so do not confuse me with with wanting less babies born. It is just the amount of babies conceived by high school aged mothers that concern me. Everyone knows the statistics regarding the difficult future for both the baby born to a teenage mother and for the mother, yet why can't people outsmart their hormones? We waited, and we are not weirdos - I think.

8. Fur coats in Houston? Russians wear them to help them survive their -50 Celsius winters because they are the warmest coat in existence . I litterally started laughing when I saw a woman wearing one at church here in Houston. It was not even freezing outside. Maybe it was faux, but probably not. Whimps.

9. What is Twitter? It sounds worse that Facebook.

10. Lastly, I was horrified when I caught myself almost telling my friend her baby was cold because he was just wearing a onsie inside his warm home. If you have read my past blog posts, you will know I am frequently accosted by my annoying but well- intentioned neighbors telling me that my baby is cold...when I can clearly see that she is not.

BONUS - Today I committed the ultimate no no. I asked a woman, who was clearly wearing a maternity top, when she was due. Yep, she was not pregnant and had never been pregnant. People, please protect me from myself! How could I forget? Have I become socially awkward now? I am terrible, terrible, terrible.

Bath-Time with Lolli

This was AB's first bubble bath. I think she liked it, but I think she really liked that her Lolli has been giving her baths since we arrived last week.

Crab flavored Pringles

America

So in case you did not know, we are in America right now. On Monday evening we flew to the capital; then on Tuesday afternoon we flew to San Francisco and on to Houston. We will be in the US until January 8th. At the recommendation of other people who have come in for a short trip from living abroad, we were keeping it on the DL for a while, but since we are here and everyone who knows our parents probably already knows that we are here, why not start putting up pictures from our trip?

We are having a lot of fun. First thing off of the flight we went to eat Tex-Mex! It was glorious! On Wednesday morning we attempted to renew KB's driver's license, but thanks to their holiday hours I am getting to sit behind the wheel until KB gets his expired license renewed tomorrow morning. I was a little concerned that I would be a bit rusty after not driving for more than 2 years, but it turns out I am still better at driving than a lot of other people : )

After the failed visit to the DMV we took AB to the mall for a formal rite of passage - her first picture with Santa. The line was like 4 hours long, so we paid to get a picture with a better looking Santa. They were able to get one picture in just before she lost it, but that was good enough. Turns out my kid is just like all the other kids when they meet Santa for the first time. We also enjoyed some Chick-Fillet, super yum!

The rest of the days have been filled with eating, shopping, and seeing friends and family.

Mold on the ceiling in KB's classroom

Peanut Butter Shakes

From our favorite, and possibly only, Tex-Mex restaurant in the capital city. They have the absolute best peanut butter shakes in the entire world.

Recently

As one of the only foreigners in town, we try to bring a feel of the US at holiday time to our home in Asia. It is notoriously a time when foreigners get homesick, so we decorate our home, watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, and bake cookies. However to share this with our friends, we host Christmas parties...lots and lots of exhausting Christmas parties. We actually enter the Christmas season with trepidation. It seemed like I froze at least 4 batches of cut sugar cookies in preparation for the parties- I freeze them so that on the day of the party I only have to bake them...4 at at time since that is all my oven will hold.

We hosted several parties, but the last party was our biggest. We grew very tired of the parties and decided to invite everyone else who we had not already been invited for one last blowout. More than 20 people crammed themselves into our tiny apartment. I made pizza, sugar cookies, finger sandwiches, chocolate cake, carrots, dip and other junk. We ate, decorated cookies, played games, and I told them the story of the first Christmas - which most of them had never heard before.

After everyone left, KB and I collapsed onto our sofa to watch a movie. I think both of us made it about 30 minutes before we crawled into bed by 8:30. I am so grateful for our daughter. She was an angel the whole time, and I think more people wanted to come to our parties to see her rather than come just for the party itself. I am also glad that we had an excuse to ask everyone to leave when the parties were over because they always ended at AB's bedtime.

Pics from KB's Cell Phone

While we were traveling a few weeks ago, we made our customary trip to Ikea. AB got a little rowdy and started posing on the bear skin throw. We had to calm her down before she started attracting attention. - just kidding, she always attracts attention.

That evening while we waited for our train, AB was clearly pooped.

It is below freezing where we live, but we just happened to purchase a stroller that is equipped for the cold. When I unveiled the foot muff for the first time, all the ladies who usually tell me that AB is too cold, exclaimed, "She is not cold today!" The top part of the stroller comes completely down and acts as a wind shield.

The Promises of Packaging

We found this label on a bottle of water. It says, "Keaibao Suda Water, Where Amazing Hoppens"... gee they could not even spell their strange phrase correctly.

We found this one on a hanger for children's clothes.

It says, "Delightfully fresh and each"... What?

She's a Happy Elf

...but a fan of wearing her boots she is not.

She prefers to eat them.

Little Fairy Little Fairy

I found these fairy wings and accessories at the local supermarket in the Christmas section (I also saw Easter decorations out with the Christmas decor, so I guess they figure all Western holiday decorations go together...?) Anyways, they were like a dollar and I could not resist. I bought two sets since I figured one day AB may have a friend that will will want to play with her. Right now that friend is me, and she could not care less.

She is no angel. She tore apart the dog's house. As you can see in the next photo...

her halo also fell off.

The Joy of Containers

We buy her toys; she prefers the empty butter-like spread container. I think that is the way it always goes for kids, right?

Leopard Girl

I was never into leopard on babies, but someone gave her this shirt and she just looks so irresistibly cute in it.

It is a shame this picture is out of focus because she is making a really adorable face in it.

Fun with Electricity...Part 2

I forgot our third encounter with something that was electric and had problems. This one was not anyone's fault but my own, so it is in a slightly different category. Umm....I dropped my cell phone in a bowl of water Tuesday night. I was holding AB with one arm on my left side, trying to wash something off with my right hand while also holding my cell phone in my right pinkie and ring finger and I dropped it. I grabbed the phone out of the water before it even hit the bottom of the bowl, but I knew that I had to work fast. This would be my second cell phone to have to replace here, the first was stollen/lost in Thailand, and I did not think KB would let me live it down.

I quickly pulled it apart, dried it with a towel, and put it in bowl of dry rice (I read about it on the internet). A day later I pulled it out of the rice, tried to find all the rice in the various crevices of the phone and put the phone back together. It worked! There is a stray grain of rice somewhere in my phone that I was unable to retrieve; it is a bit annoying, but at this point it does not matter. My phone works!

Fun with Electricity

Two things have preoccupied our time in the past couple of days. First, our 5 month old Dell that we bought because our Mac crashed...crashed yesterday as confirmed by some lady named Margaret in Dell Support. Second, we have had some problems with our electricity.

The problem with the Dell crashing can actually be easily fixed. Fortunately nothing was on the Dell that was not also on our Mac, so although it is annoying to have to spend a few hours reloading everything, it was not devastating like when our Mac crashed. The problem with the electricity was a bit more time consuming.

We live in a developing country, so we should expect power outages, no water, exposed raw sewage, and most commonly a very very smelly bathroom.

Two days ago I noticed that our bathroom smelled like firecrackers. I did not think much of it because it was possible that someone had set off firecrackers outside and the smell drifted in. It was also entirely possible someone else had been smoking in their bathroom and the smell made its way to our bathroom. Other people's smelly smells are usually source of our smelly bathroom...it is the combination of everyone's stink coming up from the drain.

Anyways, that evening our power went out around 11:30pm. This happens often if we run our hot water heater, refrigerator, microwave, and I blow dry my hair at the same time. However this time the electricity in our entire apartment went out, not just that one circuit. This problem could not be fixed by just flipping the switches in our breaker box in our apartment. We had to get into the main circuit breaker down stairs. So KB had to go to down to the apartment management building and wake up the lady sleeping in the back room to open the breaker box. That was an adventure in and of itself, but that story would go on forever if I told it.

The next evening (last night), our power went out again. This time KB knew what to do, and within about 15 minutes he was able to restore our power. Later last night I went into the bathroom, and it smelled very strongly of firecrackers. I realized at this point that the source of the smell seemed too close; I did not think it was from another apartment. I looked around for the cause, and very quickly I noticed that smoke was coming from the outlet our hot water heater was plugged into. Yep, I was certain that was the cause.

We unplugged the hot water heater and below are the pictures of what we found.

We called our friend who called our landlord to explain the problem. Our landlord is cheap and lazy, and as a result he will always go the cheap and lazy route when fixing things. Our landlord said he would come over immediately - this was at 9:00am. He did not make it to our apartment before lunch. Because of the customary nap time from 12:00-2:00pm, I did not expect him until at least 3:00pm. However at 3:00pm still he was a no show. Finally I sent a message to our friend telling her that our landlord's definition of "immediately" must be entirely relative because he had not yet arrived. I love our friend. She has done business overseas and sees how smoothly things can run in a more ordered society. She seems to think it is perfectly fine to hold the locals to the same standard. I almost feel bad for the locals when she puts them in their place. Plus she is a bit older, so it would be disrespectful of our younger landlord to brush her off. Somehow she straightened him out and finally he sent someone "immediately."

The "electrician" who came was a bit scary. He pulled off the outside of the outlet and started poking around inside with his metal tools without even shutting off the power to the outlet. However when he finally got down to the business of changing the outlet he shut of the power. Then when he was finished we expected him to replace the plug on the hot water heater, nope. Instead he shoved that melted plug right into the outlet. We held our breath, bracing for something bad to happen, but the hot water heater turned right on.

About 5 people told us the reason we kept tripping the breaker was because we were using too much electricity (something we commonly hear every time we pay our electric bill), so in the end it was validating that it had nothing to do with our power usage, just a scary plug and outlet.

Playing

When AB plays, there are certain activities that she likes to do the most.

She loves giving all things with faces kisses. This includes her stuffed animals, her tiger xylaphone, and us - particularly me.

She enjoys looking through her books. At this point I am not sure what aspect of looking through her books she enjoys the most (feeling them, bending them, taking them out of the book basket just after I put them in there, trying to tear them, and of course eating them), but the girl likes her books.

AB also likes to play with her shoes. She really likes to chew on them, but since she is actually starting to use them to walk on now, we are trying to deter the shoe chewing since the shoes will eventually walk on outside pavement. The below picture depicts a particularly wonderful situation for AB because it involves shoes and packages...

AB's favorite pastime is laying with packages. Her favorite packages are the ones that crinkle like small packages of baby wipes, but pretty much anything that is plastic that that holds other things is awesome for her.

Playing with Evan

Recently we had to get 3 new light fixtures in our apartment. When installing the original light fixtures our cheap landlord purchased such old ones that they were discontinued in 2 years. Our problem is that we could not use universal light bulbs in the cheap light fixtures, only the light bulb made by the light fixture's manufacture would fit in them. Obviously we had a problem since they were discontinued, and the even bigger problem was actually going to buy new light fixtures. Neither of us wanted to do it. It gave us a headache just thinking about it, so much in fact that we were in the dark for 3-4 months. However when we invited our Evan's parents over for dinner one evening they noticed that our kitchen, bathroom, and AB's bedroom were all in the dark. After painfully explaining (because our language and their English is not that good) the problem, they offered to take us to get the new lights.

When the men came to install the lights they did not come prepared. First, they did not bring the lights we ordered - even though they were sent here by the store we bought the lights from. They just asked us, "so where are the lights" as if we were supposed to have them. Eventually they figured out they were supposed to bring the lights with them. That was a "duh" moment for us, but apparently not for them. Then they asked us where we kept our ladder. We thought, "gee we live on the 4/5th floor of an apartment that has absolutely no storage, what you see is what you get." Lastly they did not shut off the power to the sockets before installing the lights and blew out the power in our entire apartment. These electricians where not very sharp or very safety cautious. Isn't it Electricity 101 to shut off the electricity to any open wires you are working on? Even I know that. We had to wait for our apartment manager to come back from lunch to turn the power back on. Unfortunately this was before our steam heat was on, and it was below freezing outside. It quickly became uncomfortably cold in our cement apartment. In the end though, we had 3 new name-brand lights with bulbs that can be bought at the local supermarket.

These are some pictures from when Evan and his parents came over for the installation of the lights. I have inserted my theory of their dialogue.

AB: Hey Evan look at my cell phone. Isn't it groovy?

Evan: Whatever. Look at my bottle.

AB: Yea, how old are you? I drink water from a sippy cup.

AB: Hey! What are you doing? I thought you did not even care about my cell phone!

Evan: I fooled you! Sucker! Now I have a bottle and your cell phone, and I am like twice the size of you. There is no way you are getting it back.

AB: I'll show you! This is what people get who take my cell phone!!! I might be smaller than you, but I am very quick! Take that cell phone thief! Is that bottle going to save you now?

Evan: What? How did you get to me so fast? You came at me like lighting!

AB: No mom; I was not doing anything. Cell phone? What cell phone? We were just playing, honest.

Evan: I am innocent. I am just drinking from my bottle. I never took her cell phone.

AB: Ok cell phone thief, hand over the bottle. You know what happened last time you had something I wanted.

Evan: Fine, just let me have one last sip.

AB: That's right bottle boy, it's mine now.

Mommy Time

Recently I put AB on my shoulders because...well there are a lot of hours in the day and the girl loves to play. It started out like this -

Then she started into my hair.

Then she pulled on my hair.

Then she started eating my hair.

In the end I had messy, tangled, saliva covered hair that had been ruthlessly pulled on.