Clash of the Cultures

[vertical limit]

Hey guys hope you are having a good day. I created this thread to talk about, discuss, answer queries and talk about your experience in a different culture where it wasn't acceptable. Basically culture talk. This forum is full of people from many different countries. Such as the United States, Poland, Russia, Brazilian and an Arab such as myself.

 

As you know, I am trilingual. I speak Arabic, which is my mother tongue, then there is English which I have been learning since like kindergarten and finally French, my French is only on communication, I know next to nothing on French and French Canadian culture. I have friends from both countries but they both have accents and each country is making fun of the other. When I change the language I am speaking with, it's like that I change my personality. It is nothing major like an alter ego but just different.

 

 

What made me make this topic is that I just have asked a girl out and we are together at the moment. However having a girlfriend in an Arab country, in Libya at least, is very different than Europe. In here, she can't ask you for a ride somewhere or take her to a date to eat. People will look at you differently, they may not do anything but it's just not culturally acceptable. However, my exgirlfriend that I had during my stay in the UK was a very different experience.

[EscoLehGo]

You aren't allowed to take a woman you're dating out in public in Libya? What's that about? Does she have to be your wife first or something? I'm not really bilingual (I speak enough Spanish to maybe get out of a Mexican jail) and I haven't been outside of the US since I was a teenager and even then I only went to countries in the western hemisphere so nothing was too terribly different in regards to taboos like whether or not women can move about freely on their own and sh*t like that. The most recent culture shock I experienced was inside my own country when I visited New Orleans with some friends and quickly realized that no one pays attention to you there, but in a good way. Where I'm from people will stare you up and down then they'll stare some more and people who aren't from here quickly notice it too, even I notice and I'm from here.

 

No one stared in New Orleans, everyone was going about their business and I appreciated that, also there were titties on Bourbon street everywhere even though it was way past Mardi Gras and the strippers were just fantastic. They actually looked like strippers and not single mothers who ended up on the pole after a string of bad luck and none of them had any visible c-section scars like the ones back at home.

[GTA_stu]

Well I remember growing up in Amsterdam everyone was a lot friendlier and easy going. For example I remember one time in class we were all sitting in a circle and this girl showed us all her medal (a piece of round cardboard with some tin foil wrapped around it) for learning how to wipe her own arse properly. It's a vital life skill which many people over look. So we all clapped her and gave her a round of applause for her impressive achievement. I was so jealous because I certainly hadn't mastered it yet, in fact I had to ask the teacher for assistance one time. She certainly earned her salary that year.

 

So compare that to my first day in English school. I was 7 and didn't know anybody, and I sit down in my chair and within 5 seconds this boy is telling me to f*ck off. I hadn't even sat in "his" chair, he just decided that he didn't like me. There was also a new Arab boy, who was racially abused and in tears. The class were unruly and the teacher screamed her head off for 5 minutes and nearly gave me a heart attack. It was like being in San Quentin with a bunch of bloody psychos. I wanted to go back to Amsterdam where people were polite and respectful.

 

Eventually I learned how to fit in, one of the boys in my class who was actually friends with the one that told me to f*ck off, lived near me. So I hung around with him, and I remember one time we ran by this woman pushing a pram and called her a slapper.

 

I had assimilated and become one of them.

[I<3GTAV]

I didn't really have an issue with another culture, but it was another race. Back in 2008, I was 11 or 12 and my best friend was black. I was over his house one day, and he had a picture of Obama on his wall. Me, being immature and not exactly being a fan of Obama, crossed out the face with a pencil. He didn't really care since it came out of a newspaper, so he went to throw it away. His mom saw the crossed out picture, and asked who did it. My friend said I did it, and then his mom said, "Is it because he's black?". That really pissed me off, I HATE racism, and I couldn't believe she said that. I said that I didn't agree with his views, but she still kept saying that I shouldn't like someone based on race. Why would I be in your house if I don't like black people?? Where the f*ck is logic in that?

[Stephan90]

I didn't really have an issue with another culture, but it was another race. Back in 2008, I was 11 or 12 and my best friend was black. I was over his house one day, and he had a picture of Obama on his wall. Me, being immature and not exactly being a fan of Obama, crossed out the face with a pencil. He didn't really care since it came out of a newspaper, so he went to throw it away. His mom saw the crossed out picture, and asked who did it. My friend said I did it, and then his mom said, "Is it because he's black?". That really pissed me off, I HATE racism, and I couldn't believe she said that. I said that I didn't agree with his views, but she still kept saying that I shouldn't like someone based on race. Why would I be in your house if I don't like black people?? Where the f*ck is logic in that?

You wiped out Obama at a friends house, classic.