I Experienced Culture Shock!

According to Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, culture shock “ is a term used to describe the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within an entirely different culture or social environment, such as a different country”. I remember that I felt a little bit of this shock when I traveled to Rome a couple of months ago.

Although the first symptom of culture shock is a feeling of excitement, I was terribly nervous when I arrived at the airport. I did not know where to go nor what things I was going to find. The first days in Rome I said to mayself, “my God, where I am?. What a country is this!. There is no such a country like Spain. I want to come back!”. Afortunately, these thoughts got out of my mind and soon I began to think in a different way about Rome and the Romans´customs. I had to accoustumed to the Roman way of life which was quite busy. Romans drove very fast (I remember well that sometimes crossing the street was a authentic oddissey) and this made me believe that pedestrians were obstacles for drivers. I had to accoustume to the Roman driving. There was no other way if I wanted to discover the enchant of the city by foot. It was terrible anyway!.

Another shock I had to face was time, I mean, Romans go to one place to another always as if they were out of time. A chaos I think. In Spain people also depend on clocks to arrive to one place, but I have never seen such a dependency of time in my life like the Romans´. They took dinner very early, at 8 p.m and I did not. I was accoustumed to take dinner at least at 9.30 p.m or 10 p.m in my country. This situation with time disturbed me while I was in Italy because when I looked for trattorias or restaurants to take dinner I always found that were closed, so I had to buy precook food in the market and eat in the hotel. I think that my stomach was full of this kind of food and my money too.

Despite the shock while in Rome I must...