Culture Shock

    The car swerved sharply around the corner and dipped into a pothole on the narrow, cobblestoned street. Arriving at nightfall in Rome for the beginning of our seven-month family sabbatical, I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would choose to live in this dingy city. We sat in near silence, periodically making clumsy conversation with the Italian driver who had picked us up at the airport. As I cowered in the back seat with my sisters, I saw a profuse stream of graffiti dripping from murky windows. The buildings seemed abandoned and eerie.
    We arrived at our apartment and were told the power was out. I stood, apprehensive, in the blackness of the austere stone entryway. Using a tiny tea candle for light, our landlord beckoned us up the stone steps. We followed the sputtering flame into the apartment where we would spend our first month on this foreign continent. Exhausted, I plunged into bed, but struggled to fall asleep as the unfamiliar noises from the street below penetrated the thin window panes. I missed the crisp silence of my bedroom in American suburbia and the calm street below. Never had I experienced anything so radically different, nor had I ever truly considered the possibility that such a life existed. Culture shock, my parents told me. You have culture shock.
    As the weeks in Rome flew by, though, I no longer saw old, graffitied alleyways but rather narrow passages, enticingly unpredictable. The clamor of the night comforted me and the boisterous locals radiated contagious energy. As our trip continued, I talked with an Italian family about European and American drinking habits and observed the eager buds of capitalism emerging in Slovenia. I basked in the bustle of London and plodded uncertainly through a crowded grocery store in Prague, surrounded by peculiarly silent shoppers. I wondered why Vienna had such an abundance of homeless beggars, more so than Amsterdam, Paris or Dubrovnik. Why did the riders on the Métro sit so rigidly while the Tube’s riders were quite at ease, and why were the people in Kraków so much more devout than in Rome?
    I wandered through Europe with starry eyes, reeling with rapture and awe. I came to embrace this diversity and the interest it brought – and continues to bring – to my life. I returned from our sabbatical wondering what else my coddled life in Bellevue had sheltered me from. What other lifestyles, what other ways of thinking, what other ideals, customs, opinions, food, history, places? I became insatiably curious, and I remain ferociously eager to broaden my perspective and continue my pursuit of knowledge.