Introducing the “Birds of a feather” category. Anyone can pose a question related to an experience and people who have gone through that experience can post their responses.
For example today’s question is :
“Do you have any interesting experiences to share about your initial days in the USA? Many of us go thru some humorous situations when in a new place. Did you go thru some such humorous situation. If so, Share and Enlighten us. “
Some other examples for future could be “trip fiascos”, “traffic tickets”, etc.
This is just one more way to get more people participating on the online kutchvalley site. Sharing always brings people closer and hopefully by sharing some humorous experiences this community will be that much more closer.
To take a cue from Javed Jaffrey’s style :
“Kutchvalley folks are the smarts people. They need the pushes every now then. I not to be trusting everyone, but i trust sure the kutchvalley making a good contents.
Babes, What do I say about Idle mind and workshop of devil? EXACTLY. “
So sharpen your wits and post about interesting initial experiences in USA.
This is not my experience but someone that I know. This person was new in USA at the airport ordering a burger. The lady asked “For here or To Go?”.
The boy thought she was asking about him (instead of the food) and replied “I am HERE currently for studying but WILL GO back after getting my degree”.
I remember seeing an area filled with cars and asking one person “Quite a big car dealership, Isn’t it?”. It was in fact a parking lot.
I landed into US at 2am with no one at the airport to receive me (the guy supposed to receive me went off to sleep since the plane was late). The airport closed down for the remainder of the night after my flight and my bags which arrived before me in earlier flight were locked up in a room which I could see thru a window but could not get them out. So quite a non-pleasant entry into the US. 🙂
This is a cool session….Initially when I came from India and had nothing to do would write long mails to friends back home…..Would let my friends know my first hand experiences and how I felt about the whole new country…Here are few lines from those mails..
During end of September- October there is this World series of Baseball that goes on here and every Tom Dick and Harry is front of the television to watch it. On hearing its World Series… I very ignorantly asked my husband “Which countries are gonna participate? After how many years it is held?” All the while I was relating it to the Cricket World Cup that I have grown up with. To my surprise this game is played every year among various teams in America. Then what is the reason for calling it a World Series??? Can someone explain? Maybe Americans think they are world to themselves, though they are dependant on others for everything. Everything that you buy here in stores is made in China or India or Bangladesh or Taiwan or Indonesia or Mexico.
Here funeral is such a costly affair.
It takes about $6000 for the funeral
ceremony. And its amazing that people invest in funeral funds…..Investing in death…Scary
I was amazed to see chain of every business be it fast food, clothes or even ladies night club (Hooters). This was very prominent in East Coast and Mid West…It seems like small businesses have tough time surviving…
There was one more funny incident at my first job in Boston…On a Friday afternoon a collegaue of mine came over my desk and requested me to do the stuff quickly as he said ” Hey Sneha I need to go early as my children, my wife’s children and our children ( he and his wife’s) are waiting for me”
My arrival was in a rural town “Johnson City” in Tennessee. I did not know of a single familiar student in the entire state of Tennessee let alone Johnson City. No Indian Student Association also (East Tennessee State University).
Fortunately the KOJAIN directory came in handy. Found out a kutchi family staying in a nearby city and contacted them from India. They were helpful and came to receive me also at the tiny airport. Imagine my surprise at seeing the vast areas of greenery and mountains whereas I had expected the “movie style buildings” in my vision of arrival in USA.
There were barely 10 indian students in the whole university. Fortunately everything worked out fine and 10 was a good enough number to pass the time. All of us are still in touch and mostly in the bay area.
I landed in Kansas City — also midwest and had similar reaction like Prashant (and have heard it from folks who land in any small town) — “Is this US ? Where are the skyscrapers and neon lights?”
Visiting the campus bookstore was always interesting cause you would look at book priced around $50 and u knew u could get them back home for around Rs 50 – 100. Spending 89 cents for a single 2B pencil when you could by a 10 pack in India for Rs 10.
In reply to Samir’s experience, I remember going to Kinko’s with the intention of xeroxing a textbook taken from library. (Buying it would mean spending almost 50$).
As I kept xeroxing page after page, I kept glancing here and there and half expected someone to tap my shoulder and tell me “Excuse me, What do you think you are doing?”.
I also remember going to Subway for the first time (Someone was giving a birthday treat). We (seven of us) spent 30 mins trying to understand the various menu options and the choices that were available to us while making a subway sandwich.
On dy three I was so keen to eat Mexican food in USA…I insisted Amit should take me to Taco Bell as that was one outlet I used to see near our apartment in Boston…American Tacos I was so excited and thought would be like the one I used to amke in India or used to eat at OvenFresh..
First bite and I puked…eeek just boiled beans….AMit got handful of hot sauce to add some flavor….but no…I came home without eating anything…
Prashant about photocopying I guess most us would expect that xeroxwalla would do it for us…just like home..
Speaking of Taco Bell….
First day Mita landed in US….that evening we had gone to k-mart for some shopping (there was a k-mart in Sunnyvale near Bharat Bazar now replaced by Kohl)
and then went to eat in Taco Bell….and….
After that we never went to Taco Bell for 3 years…
Another unique experience was moving from Daylight Savings to standard time and vice versa.
Of course I had experience of this before coming to US as I was working in India on a system that suddenly changed time by one hr the first week of April — similar to this year and we thought someone had pulled a April’s Fools Joke
But coming here and seeing days go on till 8:30 pm and then come winter done by 4:30 took some adjusting to.
When I first heard that the time was going to change I was shocked. No one had prepared me for it. And I was like “How come this is not there in the newspapers in BIG HEADLINES? After all Going BACK in time is not a small thing 🙂 ”
I must have asked “Are you sure time is changing?” 10 times.
Yeah Daylight Saving…I was in New York visiting a friend and everyone is talking about this weird concept…and freaking over it oh we will get one more hour to sleep and blah blah….There were signd in the apartment complex and I never understood any of it except that people were happy to sleep long…
Another weird thing I felt was one state- Indiana with three different time zones…Some parts followed East some followed Central time zeone and Indianapolis had no daylight saving so time never changed….
.
How about on the first (few) trip(s) to McDonalds being convinced that if there is already a “Hamburger” on the menu then the “Cheeseburger” must be the vegetarian one..
This happened when I had been here less than a year.
I once had to give a ride to a friend from the airport in the afternoon. So I sent an email to my team saying that I will be out of office for 2 hours from 12PM.
I was surprised when a colleague emailed back asking if I meant afternoon or midnight.
Here is one more :
When i camed back to US in 95 and had joined DHL Airways as a contracter…got introduced on the first day to a white lady who was the Business lead and i introduced my self as Bhavesh…and she replied Hello Bey-vesh (like pronouncing 2 in gujarati – Bey-vesh) .. confused cuz there was already another contracter named Devesh working inthe same project as mine …..