Most people know what culture shock is a sort of disorientation or uneasiness that comes from visiting or living in another culture or country. There are various degrees and outcomes to culture shock. Some people never get it, others experience it right away. A few people just have mild little inklings, like cravings for a favorite food from home. Other people go into a depression or get angry and unhappy, just depends who you are, where you are, and for how long.
Most of the people I know are seasoned travellers they are used to things like jet lag & adapting to new situations on the fly but even they get a hankering for something from back home from time to time. None of us (I don't think) here are having anything close to culture shock really but the other night at dinner we starting discussing different foods and that set everyone off on what they missed or wished they had.
As I've said before we have a cook here, he's Indian and more power to him, he provides us with two large meals a day and leaves things out for us to fend for ourselves for breakfast. We all get up at different times so a sit down breakfast doesn't work. He also has sweet tea & biscuits brought to us in the field so we aren't going to starve any time soon. He is cooking for anywhere from 6-14 of us depending on the week. There are archaeologists, architects, & conservators all sharing a house and working, mostly, on two different sites. We have vegetarians & carnivores so the meals have to vary & feed a mass of people. We typically have rice, veggies, meat, bread and pasta. (Did I mention half of the people in the house are from Italy so we get pasta with tomatoes every other meal.)
We had this crazy theme of orange food going on for awhile, everything seemed to be orange colored. Cauliflower in an orange sauce, fish in an orange sauce, potatoes some how magically colored orange. They didn't all taste the same but they were the same color. Also, nothing is spicy (which is disappointing to me) but its still orange. Anyway, one day we had orange food with ... wait for it ... GREEN chicken, it was weird but didn't taste too bad.
My very long point is that we have been eating about the same things every meal & we are getting tired of it. Everyone that knows Brian & I know that we eat out quite a bit. Doesn't have to be fancy but we eat places like Red Robin, Chili's, and lots of Mexican food. (We live in AZ.) So eating the same things over & over is weird for us. This kicked off our culture shock of missing certain foods from home. The number one complaint from everyone was beef--you just don't get it here very often (well and of course there is no pork but none of us really mentioned that except I told the Italians I could go for some prosciutto!) Currently we are made up of Italians, Americans, & one Australian.
So after all that, the Italians that are here have been working in the area for years and they suggested a night out. They know of an ex-pat bar/restaurant called the Oasis but it's about 20 min away. We were all like ok, maybe, sometime... THEN they said they have real steaks and WINE. We booked it for the next night! All nine of us wanted to go.
We had two bottles of wine and all but the vegetarians ordered steak & it was fantastic. We are going there next week for sure! There were a variety of people there from all over the world which is also fun to see & to talk to them.
There are many other aspects to culture shock... things like seeing women completely veiled or men in dishdasha's (the long, usually white, robe like dresses the men where here) but the opposite is true too. You get so used to seeing that and dressing somewhat modestly that when you see someone in a tank top or shorts you stare at them longer. In your head you say things like "why is she naked, running around in public like that!" It's weird. ;-)
Another shock is lack of alcohol--it's not really forbidden but is only sold certain places and it's sort of hard to get. When you come from America (& I'm sure Italy) where alcohol is a part of life you realize how much you miss an ice cold beer or a glass of wine. Not to mention a lemon drop martini--how hard is it to get lemonade & vodka--I ask you it's not rocket science but it's impossible here. I got a cosmo martini and the bar at the hotel next door and it was like kool-aid--not cool!
As I said most of us aren't really suffering from culture shock, most of us are seasoned travelers but we are all craving certain things--mostly food related! ;-)
Most of the people I know are seasoned travellers they are used to things like jet lag & adapting to new situations on the fly but even they get a hankering for something from back home from time to time. None of us (I don't think) here are having anything close to culture shock really but the other night at dinner we starting discussing different foods and that set everyone off on what they missed or wished they had.
As I've said before we have a cook here, he's Indian and more power to him, he provides us with two large meals a day and leaves things out for us to fend for ourselves for breakfast. We all get up at different times so a sit down breakfast doesn't work. He also has sweet tea & biscuits brought to us in the field so we aren't going to starve any time soon. He is cooking for anywhere from 6-14 of us depending on the week. There are archaeologists, architects, & conservators all sharing a house and working, mostly, on two different sites. We have vegetarians & carnivores so the meals have to vary & feed a mass of people. We typically have rice, veggies, meat, bread and pasta. (Did I mention half of the people in the house are from Italy so we get pasta with tomatoes every other meal.)
We had this crazy theme of orange food going on for awhile, everything seemed to be orange colored. Cauliflower in an orange sauce, fish in an orange sauce, potatoes some how magically colored orange. They didn't all taste the same but they were the same color. Also, nothing is spicy (which is disappointing to me) but its still orange. Anyway, one day we had orange food with ... wait for it ... GREEN chicken, it was weird but didn't taste too bad.
My very long point is that we have been eating about the same things every meal & we are getting tired of it. Everyone that knows Brian & I know that we eat out quite a bit. Doesn't have to be fancy but we eat places like Red Robin, Chili's, and lots of Mexican food. (We live in AZ.) So eating the same things over & over is weird for us. This kicked off our culture shock of missing certain foods from home. The number one complaint from everyone was beef--you just don't get it here very often (well and of course there is no pork but none of us really mentioned that except I told the Italians I could go for some prosciutto!) Currently we are made up of Italians, Americans, & one Australian.
So after all that, the Italians that are here have been working in the area for years and they suggested a night out. They know of an ex-pat bar/restaurant called the Oasis but it's about 20 min away. We were all like ok, maybe, sometime... THEN they said they have real steaks and WINE. We booked it for the next night! All nine of us wanted to go.
We had two bottles of wine and all but the vegetarians ordered steak & it was fantastic. We are going there next week for sure! There were a variety of people there from all over the world which is also fun to see & to talk to them.
There are many other aspects to culture shock... things like seeing women completely veiled or men in dishdasha's (the long, usually white, robe like dresses the men where here) but the opposite is true too. You get so used to seeing that and dressing somewhat modestly that when you see someone in a tank top or shorts you stare at them longer. In your head you say things like "why is she naked, running around in public like that!" It's weird. ;-)
Another shock is lack of alcohol--it's not really forbidden but is only sold certain places and it's sort of hard to get. When you come from America (& I'm sure Italy) where alcohol is a part of life you realize how much you miss an ice cold beer or a glass of wine. Not to mention a lemon drop martini--how hard is it to get lemonade & vodka--I ask you it's not rocket science but it's impossible here. I got a cosmo martini and the bar at the hotel next door and it was like kool-aid--not cool!
As I said most of us aren't really suffering from culture shock, most of us are seasoned travelers but we are all craving certain things--mostly food related! ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment