Land of Strangers

The culture shock of returning to a place with different social interactions is striking this time. This time I was a bit amazed to be back in a city where one is almost forced to talk to strangers on a regular basis, or to at least make eye contact with them. Such interactions are usually perfectly polite, but at least a bit reserved. Here, contact is brief and limited, which perhaps explains its urgency; people become overly-friendly because they are unaccustomed to having opportunities to interact. I am beginning to feel my own behavior changing in this way as well. I was particularly shocked by the difference when I went to Austin a few years ago with some native Arizonans--they were excessively loud in public places and attracted a great deal of unwanted (by me) attention. Perhaps we, or people like us, are the reason why Americans have earned a reputation as being noisily rude as tourists.