Jet Lag & Culture Shock

As I write this in Romania, I’m experiencing the ill-effects of jet lag. My body is still on US-Eastern time. That means that my body wants to stay up really late at night and stay in bed really late in the morning. I know that the best thing for me to do is to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour in the evening and wake up at a specific time in the morning. Otherwise, I will continue to function on US time instead of readjusting to Romania time.

When I returned to the US earlier this month, I experienced a different type of readjustment. Just as my body is now on “US time,” even though I’m back in Romania, at the beginning of my stay in the US, my mind was set to “Romanian cultural norms” and I had to readjust my way of thinking to match “American cultural norms.”

The following is a list of 10 of the more interesting cultural readjustments I’ve had to make during my recent visit to the US:

1. Driving – The first cultural readjustment was on the way home from the airport. We were in a 6-lane highway through rural Maryland, and although traffic was moving along rather smoothly, I felt that everyone was driving rather slowly. It took me a while to realize why it felt so strange to be going so slowly. Then I realized why: there was a speed limit, and people (more or less) respected it! In Romania, driving is, well, more creative. Romanians drive on windy 2-lane roads much faster than Americans drive on straight 6-lane roads!
2. Shoes – In Romania, it is customary to remove one’s shoes when entering someone’s home. Since people walk most places, you never know what is on the bottom of your shoes. (This is especially common during wet and wintery weather when you don’t want to track mud through someone’s home.) Every time I visited someone’s home in the US, I had the urge to take off my outdoor shoes as I would walk through their front door.
3. Pedestrians – Romania has very strict pedestrian laws. Pedestrians are to cross at crosswalks. In large cities where there are traffic lights with pedestrian signals, the pedestrians are only to cross when their light is green. (As opposed to the speed limits, this law is usually followed – since drivers do not yield for pedestrians if the pedestrian light is red...at least, not without honking or yelling at them.) Boston, however, has very different customs. For both pedestrians and motorists, the pedestrian signals mean virtually nothing. Pedestrians cross the street whenever they feel like it, and vehicles yield to them. Since I’m not a Bostonian, I played it safe and waited for the pedestrian signal to change to “walk.”
4. Greetings – In Romania, it is customary to always greet people when entering a room. Men will go around the room and shake hands with all the other men in the room upon entering. In America, I sometimes had the urge to stop what I’m doing to get up and greet someone who has just entered the room with a handshake, even if I was in the middle of doing something else.
5. Speaking English – I have grown accustomed to speaking Romanian to strangers, including cashiers, tellers, and waiters. When I first returned to the US, I’d enter a store and think to myself, “How would I ask for such-and-such in Romanian?” Then I’d realize that I don’t have to – because they wouldn’t know anyway! It was much easier to speak English!
6. More Food? Romanian hosts and their guests often “dance” with one another when it comes to offering food. Here’s an example: the host asks if I want some food, and I say, “No, thank you.” A few moments later, the host asks me a second time, and again I say, “No, thank you.” We may go through this a few more times until, finally, the host decides that I should have some food and serves it to me anyway. After a few days in America, I realized that I was hungry all the time because whenever I said that I didn’t want food, the host didn't force me to eat. I had to learn to speak up if I wanted more food!
7. Hosts – Romanians are wonderfully generous hosts (as you may have guessed from #6). A difference between American and Romanian hosts is that when visiting a Romanian, they would never say “help yourself to whatever is in the fridge.” Romanians serve their guests and generally don’t want their guests to get into their kitchen cabinets or refrigerator, or to help wash dishes. It took a few days to feel comfortable at the home of my American friends where I was staying to offer to wash dishes or to look through their cabinets.
8. Exact Change – When paying a bill in Romania, the amount is usually rounded to the nearest 5 or 10 cents. When I had a bill in the US that ended in 76 cents, I was a bit irritated that I received 2 dimes and 4 pennies (6 coins) as change, rather than a single quarter, as would have been done in Romania!
9. No cash – Romania is still very much a cash-based society; you pay with cash more than with any other form of currency. I found it a bit strange that there are businesses in the US which do not accept cash payments. (Don’t you find it strange that you can’t pay with money?)
10. Dinner Time – Romanians eat their main meal each day around 2pm, and their evening meal is around 7 or 8pm. When I arrived at a restaurant in America at 7:30 pm to meet a friend, it was almost empty. I actually thought it was closed. I couldn’t figure out why it would be so empty. It wasn't until about half way through our meal that it dawned on me that the usual evening meal time for most Americans is around 5 or 6pm. The restaurant was empty because the customers had already left by the time I arrived!