What does it feel like to arrive in the USA for the first time?

Ashish Kedia, lived in San Francisco Bay Area

Answered Fri

• You are greeted with a huge immigration clearance queue and the whole process sounds “too intimidating” for the first time.
• If you are not acquainted with Hollywood movies, you will have trouble with the accent.
• Accessibility of public infrastructure is a huge deal unlike many other countries. You start to realize this at the airport itself. May be this is something about the “developed” nations.
• The cab drivers in USA really like to talk. They will try to engage in small predictable but sweet conversation.
• Pizza by slices ? Totally American. On my first day in America I learned about things like “gluten-free” pizza,
• “O” is instead “zero”. Too confusing. Your room number is “2-O-3”. Americans do not like decimals too. “Sir, that would be 573” instead of “5 dollars 73 cents”.
• You can actually talk on phone while taking a walk down the road in USA. No one honks. At first I thought it was only America. Later I realized it was only India.
• Americans like guns. It was for the first time I saw guns in hands of civilians :O. I would be scared to talk to someone if I knew they had a gun. I guess that is a cultural thing.
• USA is very expensive. A middle class Indian like me would always convert dollars into rupee in my mind before purchasing anything. It took a few weeks to get rid of that habit. Human labor is particularly expensive.
• Was surprised to see how restaurants like “Madras Cafe”, “Lahore Karachi” and “Udupi Palace” thrive in the same street opposite to each other. Indians and Pakistanis in USA do not hate each other as much as they do at their home turf. It’s really sad how we are so united in foreign land and so divided at home.
• If you would believe, there is actually a button on most traffic crossings in USA (and other developed nations) used by pedestrians to indicate that they want to cross the road. Woah. That was like a super power.
• There are always so many choices available for everything. In India, there was just coffee and tea. In USA there is decaf, espresso, double espresso, latte, mocha, cappuccino, etc. Ordering anything to eat is a nightmare. Americans love customizing food.
• The advertisements in USA are very boring. In India, I sometimes find advertisement funnier than the actual content.