Returning home from studying abroad last year can feel wonderful! You are back home in a familiar environment, surrounded by old friends and family. However, things that you once took for granted at home – for example, buying groceries once a week or once every other week – might seem shocking to you now after having been away for so long. Here are a few elements of American culture that might take you by surprise after studying abroad:
1. Everything is car, car, car!
Being abroad showed you how convenient it was to live in a country that has heavily invested in trains and public transportation. Now it’s back to the old American way of pleading with your friends who have cars to give you a ride.
2. Farmers markets are the most expensive.
While you were abroad, you might have found that buying produce at open air markets was your cheapest (and tastiest) option, but now you’ve come home to the sober reality: farmers markets here are overpriced. Oh well, back to the supermarket.
3. Early dinner
You got accustomed to aperitif culture and late dinners from studying abroad in Europe. Now, eating dinner before 8 PM seems barbarically early!
4. You have 27 toothpaste options at the drugstore.
Wherever you have studied abroad, you most likely found yourself in situations where you had fewer options than in America when buying toothpaste, deoderant, etc. You grew accustomed to having fewer options in stores and now the large variety of products you find at CVS seems completely unnecessary.
5. Your daily croissant + Nutella + espresso = no more
While you were studying abroad, you realized that the key to eternal happiness was your daily croissant and Nutella. Now that you’ve returned home, you’re bombarded with angry “fat free” and “no sugar added” suggestions everywhere you turn at breakfast time. You now consider twenty-ounce Starbucks drinks to be nothing more than brown water and you yearn for just one small sip of a tiny European espresso.
Welcome back home, study abroad Collegiettes, and may your culture shock in returning back home slowly be eased.