We left our hometown. Every one of us has lived in another far away country and had the American dream. Most of us have had the difficult time about the languages, customs, or educations. Maybe, some people say it’s a problem of language. I think it’s not only that the language’s different, but also the culture. We were “shocked” and couldn’t understand. What troubles most people is culture shock.
The culture shock is from different culture and customs. They had lived different country and area. Sometimes, they can’t understand the people live here. And other people feel strange about them. I read an article from the newspaper. The story said there is a family from Asia. They had lived in America for a long time. Both parents had a great job. One day, when the kids fell down, the grandfather used the traditional way to cure his grandson. While the doctor was checking the child’s body, he found an old mark on the body and notified the authority. Then the court took the child away from his family. Because the court thought, parents mistreated their child. In fact, they love their child very much. In the end, the judge was touched by their love to the child and gave back their child. Right now, this story was making the famous movie. This is one example about culture shock. Both groups were working with different assumptions about health practices and the meaning of marks on the child’s body. I thought most of immigrates people have similar experience. We can’t say who is right or wrong.
The reason only is the culture is different. If they learned the local culture, people would understand each other better.
Another thing, the educational methods are different. For basic education, students have no choice but to learn and listen to teachers in Asia. They can’t study basic knowledge according to their interest. Every semester, they cannot go to next level if they don’t pass the exam. In whole country, they standardize our textbooks. Students should study hard for their literature, math, chemical, etc. Then they can go into the college and university. One of my friends wasted her time and money here to learn what had been learned at her high school in her country. But she didn’t know how to communicate with the teacher and classmate in the class. The teacher expected students to more freely and think creatively during the class. I think when people come to a different country, they need to learn not only the knowledge but also the culture, and then they can feel their life is not too difficult here and understand more about the new country.
Immigrate people all have the culture shock more or less when they come from totally different places. The culture is the first thing they have to learn. It can help them to know what they cannot understand, and open their mind and make the life richer. Culture shock isn’t a terrible thing because it makes people to think and learn from each other.
— September 17, 2002
