Do you get culture shock coming back to America?

[ladislav]

The good things after 2.5 years in the Philippines.

The insidious, ubiquitous noise pollution is gone. In the PH, people have a high tolerance threshold for music, screaming, loud talking, etc. They can fall asleep on a bus while a rock concert is being played at top volume with no one minding it a bit. There is always persistent, imposing noise- everywhere and 24 hours a day. Suddenly ,it was silence.

I was relieved to see that I was no longer treated as a perennial foreigner and not attracting looks, even if they were good. It was nice that people would look at me and then, look away. I looked like everyone else.

The streets were clean and there was little traffic. The air was fresh- finally.

When I went to a local supermarket, everything was finally available. Oh, my God, peaches, cherries, raspberries- I had not seen those in years. Plums! I was hungry for those, dreaming of them and they were nowhere to be found. Yes, you can get a girl and have fun in the Philippines, but there are no plums! I thought them sexy. Boy did I buy kilos of those!

Taxi drivers know where places are. They use GSMs if they don't. People are competent. If they don't know, they ask around and tell you. There's common sense in everything and everything is well organized and works. The Internet finally works, too, with very few interruptions. You don't need to wait hours to download a simple file.

Fewer mistakes made by the people- about 10% of the ones in the Philippines. There, in just about every action by anyone who gives you service, there are mistakes being made by that person, all the time. Everything is done in starts. Every simple thing is difficult. Not here.

Slick, super- efficient service. You just call people about this and that and they take care of it immediately. No delays, no bs. They know, they can. 1-2-3, done!

Credit is so bloody easy!