Culture Shock Experiences

Wow. I guess if you always lived there, you accept it as normal, but being from USA that is hard to relate to.

I understand where you're coming from, but I do not intend to imply that the US or the bay area in particular are not a nice place to live. If anything, I'd find it hard to adapt to most other places, having had some of my prior personal positions jolted by points of view that I hadn't ever considered. Most people are I interact with are lovely and open minded. The scars of institutional racism are very noticeable and are uncomfortable to me, and it makes it hard to comment on som

For what it's worth, I'm from a Western country (the U.S.) and I don't find it acceptable. These threads are always disheartening to me. I think you're right that we don't always see it because we associate with like-minded people.

I don't know why so many commentators are taking a polar stance.I sometimes hang out with people from my native country; that doesn't mean I'm unhappy with the USA or Americans born here. Some things still strike me as weird, and some things I do strike others as weird so it's occasionally nice to be immersed in a group of people who understand that.And I come from an English-speaking country and am treated like a white male (not true for me as a kid before I came here

To be honest, my mind is blown. The activities you have described are not the country I live in. I don't know how else to say it, and this is not meant to be an attack. We simply do not view the world the same way, and I guess that happens in a country of 300,000,00 people.

Not the OP, but this is a Big Thing for me too (and I'm from Uruguay). I am aware of a lot of other differences, but I don't see that many other things that I'd care about.And I've been to middle-of-nowhere, USA and have family there so I know it's not a bed of roses, but you also don't fully realize how good you have it in many other ways.

That stereotype goes away after living there - no worries :)

Agreed. I think beyond tourist voyeurism, there is something really maturing(?) about being inserted into a completely different culture where people seem to be content. I grew up in rural Wisconsin and even the micro-change of moving away for college in a place like St. Louis had very important implications for my worldview.

I feel like the majority of his "areas of impact" that living overseas has had on him could have just as easily happened if he had stayed in America, but moved to a city with some more diversity. It's more about growing up and making friends with people that think differently than you than just transplanting yourself.

People dont realize how much ‘casual racism’(i.e. without anger or violence) there is outside of the West. I grew up looking/seen as ‘foreign’ in my home country. I was never allowed to forget it, whereas when spending a year n the US I felt more accepted than ever before.