culture shock

before leaving for a new culture, everyone who has ever lived in one, as well as some who have not, try to give you information on what it's going to be like. things you might encounter. things you might like as well as things that you may dislike. and for me, this is where i found most people focusing. they would focus on things that might make you want to pack it up and go home...
things like... no one speaking the same language as you do, so you can not communicate with anyone.
having to eat food that you would otherwise have nightmares about
having to squat all the time to use the bathroom
using public transportation that takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour longer than it would if you had your own car...
you get my point...

in my short time here I'm not going to try and make it sound like i have experienced none of the mentioned things above. however, i will say that none of the for-mentioned things are anywhere as bad as others made them out to be.

but, a few weeks ago i had a culture shock moment that no one warned me about. no one told me that this could happen. and thus culture shock hit...

there is only one restaurant in this crazy town that even comes closes to reminding me of home. ONE. so, from time to time i enjoy going there. on this particular day, jamie and i decided that it would be good if we went to this place for lunch. we eat so much food off the street, that every now and then you want something that you know will be good for you. so we order and we eat and then conclude that our time here is done and the world outside those tinted doors is awaiting us.

as we step outside and begin to squint to adjust to the sun, we begin walking back to our rat infested home. upon turning a sharp right we glance up and at maybe a hundred yards in front of us we see culture shock.
you see we live in a culture where you really don't talk to the opposite sex. so much so that if you ask me how to talk to a girl in arabic i will look up at you and laugh and say "ma9lesh". (means sorry)
but these were not just any girls..these were three white girls who clearly had not been in country for long, for they were wearing clothing that i had not seen in a long time..by that i mean shorts...on a girl

let me back up just a bit.
before turning this corner jamie and i were having a marvelous conversation, about something deep and meaning i am sure. however, as we looked up and saw these girls, it was clear that neither one of us knew what to do. so we did what any twenty something guys do when they see white girls in a foreign country... we stopped talking and looked at the ground as if we thought dirt was the most amazing thing we had ever seen. as if we had never seen it before.

now i must say that during all this i really had no idea that either one of us where thinking "oh my gosh, what are we going to do," but i for one can admit that if these girls would have said anything to us i would have looked up at them and said something like..... "howyoujasonmyname" all one word.

right then and there i realized that i have forgotten how to talk to the opposite sex.

if you would like to know the rest of the story there is not much to tell. the girls said nothing to us, and we said nothing to them.
as we continued on our way, we did not miss a beat in continuing our conversation. at the time it was like we did not even realize what just happened.
this is how things go here. culture shock shows itself in many different forms. for me, it just revealed itself in a way that i may have to apologize for a lot when i return home.