Scotland vs. Arizona: Reverse Culture Shock

People have been asking me: "So how does it feel to be back in Tucson?" And the answer is, "Mainly, weird."

Some things feel very normal - for example, driving again is pretty much like it ever was, despite the kids' amazement that now I can drive.  With broad roads,  well-signed streets, and a zippy new(ish) car, driving is pretty easy, except for the unpredictable behavior of other drivers.   

But little things are odd.

I'm still walking on the wrong side of the walking path, which tends to be a problem on a campus with 50,000+ people - I'm likely to get bashed into (or run over by a bike, skateboard, or golf cart) if I'm not careful.

U of A Administrative building with cactus garden in front

When I went out to lunch, and we cleared our table afterward, it felt odd, as you would just leave your dishes on the table for someone else to clear in Scotland, even at a small cafe, so I haven't cleared my dishes at a restaurant for 2 years.

Looking at refrigerators and washing machines and cars (for example) - lots of things are just BIGGER in the U.S. These things seemed small in Scotland at first, and then we got used to the smallness so now everything seems big.

Dropping the kids off at school is different - I've traded a 30 minute walk (up two hills to A's school and down 1 1/12 hills to my work) for a 60 minute drive each morning, dropping C off, and then A, and then finally heading to work myself.  I still get a bit of a walk...but when I got my parking permit, the guys looked at me strangeley, as if "Why would you want to walk; most people want to park as close as possible to work!" And they wonder why obesity is a major problem in the U.S.

The Mexican food is certainly a lot better here, and the diversity of places to eat.  But with diversity comes mediocrity, too.  There are a LOT of "not that good" restaurants that can stay in business (all they have to do is fool some of the people, some of the time), so you have to be wary. And the prices seem to have risen exponentially in the five years we've been gone. We haven't even tried the sushi place yet, concerned about sticker shock.

There is a lot of choice...Dundee has fewer choices, in places to shop, places to eat - we relied a lot more on Amazon.co.uk to get us things that we wanted but couldn't find conveniently in town.  But in Tucson, choice abounds. Restaurants, stores, multiple malls. But then you have Target - which I missed when we first arrived in Dundee, but now seems like a black hole for money - you walk in, and $65 is vacuumed out of your pocket.  Even if you're only stopping by "to get one little thing."  In the UK, pharmacies sell medicines and a few related items (diapers, sanitary supplies). In Tucson, medicines are only one of approximately a million items sold by Walgreens or CVS. 

As I was when I first arrived in Tucson from the East Coast, I am surprised and how sunny it is, and how big the sky is.  Scotland has beautiful scenery on a sunny day, but the sun, and open space are different here in Arizona.

It's different driving around, too...I keep wanting to pull the car over and snap pictures of the "different from Dundee" things - like storefronts advertising homemade tamales, and tortillas. Like the surprisingly large number [now THIS is something that has changed in 5 years] of places where you can be certified as a user of medical marijuana...just right there as you drive past...don't know if they're all dispenaries, or a combination of sellers and "doctors" [I put this in quotes not because I doubt effects, but because this doesn't seem like the kind of service a doctor might specialize in, or advertise widely, but maybe it's just me] popping up to serve a market that has probably always been there in Tucson, but just not so..in your face.

I'm switching back to American words and spellings, even though I had switched over in Scotland - it's a bin, not a trash can; trousers, not pants; I'd even started saying "If you fancy X" - all that has to go. Ditto spelling - writing papers for British journals, having my email correct me when I slipped up - "behaviour", especially was one I used a lot and now have to not spell "wrong" for the American audience. 

But maybe I should try to keep the British spelling and speech patterns - I fogot how "cool" it is to be British in the U.S. It gives you a certain authority that you lack if you're just a regular American.  Some of my new co-workers were telling me I had an accent - I tried to explain that I've always kind of had a British-esqe accent, but it's just magnified by virtue of having spent two years where all my co-workers sounded like that...but maybe I should just cultivate it, and pretend I'm really a Brit. Trouble is, if I really try to do a Scottish accent, I end up sounding like the leprechaun from Lucky Charms. So scratch that. I'll just have to be an American for whom, right now, Scotland seems normal and Arizona seems weird.  Until it doesn't anymore.    

We Have Acclimatized. I Mean, Acclimatised.

For my last Scottish language post, I said that we had given in, and started speaking more like Scots.  But really, it's not giving in at all.  It's acclimatizing.  Or as they say in the U.K., acclimatising.

I used to teach this in Introduction to Biological Anthropology - what is acclimatization? Acclimatization is adjusting to your environment.  I remember that Rhonda, my mentor, used to use the example of sweating in Arizona.  When you first arrive in Arizona from another part of the U.S. that features more reasonable temperatures, you sweat equally all over your body.  After a a few weeks, your body adjusts and you begin to sweat more efficiently, preferentially cooling your trunk, because, of course, that's where the important stuff for staying alive is located.  You have acclimatized. 

In Scotland, we have acclimatized in several ways.

First, we have changed our language, as previously discussed.  Even Paul, who doesn't really have much of an ear for languages, tending to remain pretty much American-English only, complains that half the time he calls our daughter's sweater a "jumper," in proper English fashion.  And as I read a book about food the other day with the three-year old, she identified the red fruit as a "to-mah-to." No, I said. "To-may-to."

We have also acclimatized to the cold, or more properly the absence of heat.  The cold is still nasty.  Especially the windy, rainly cold, like the entire month of November. Not kidding, the entire month. But, when we were in Edinburgh last July to get our passports renewed, it was HOT. And by HOT I mean 75 degrees.  This weather is described by Scots as "roastin'" and indeed we were roasting. It was clear and sunny ALL DAY, unheard of around here...here is a picture of that day. Look! Short sleeves! And I have my fleece around my waist, it's so hot. Truly, roastin'.

Roasting in Edinburgh, August 2014.

Another acclimatization is to driving - and riding - on the wrong side of the road.  Paul now has a full UK driving license, but in the early days he gave a couple of car dealers near-heart-attacks as he drive down the road, trying to stay to the side instead of (counterintuitively) hugging the center (I mean centre) line of the road.  Riding in the passenger seat, which would be the driver's seat in the US, took some getting used to, too.  For the first month or more, I habitually tried to get into the wrong side of the car.  Once I was in the correct seat, it still felt strange to be in the driver's seat yet have no control over the car.  And going around all the roundabouts made me feel slighly sick every time we took the car anywhere.  But eventually, I acclimatized.

The last acclimatization was to food availability.  When we first arrived, our families and others from the U.S. would ask us if we missed anything from the U.S., food-wise. And at first, we did. Decent bagels. Normal marshmallow. S'mores. But as we were here a little longer, we adjusted to what you could (and could not) get and became concerned with the bigger issues, that were mostly beyond our control.  Like, there are only two kinds of takeout food in Dundee that are any good.  They are: fish and chips, and Indian/Pakistani food. That's it. I feel lucky because I get to travel for work every couple of months, so every time I go to a bigger city, I seek out decent takeout food - Thai! Mediterranean! Sushi! Even (dare I hope for it?) Mexican! Okay, not really. You have to go all the way to London for that! Also, while the grocery store carries a number of products that we want to buy, they seem to mkae a game of organizing them in the most obscure possible way, so we can't find them. And, although we have also aclimatized to this, the Scottish idea of "customer service" bears only a faint resemblence to what you would see in the U.S. The idea of low profile shop assistants does have some benefit - you will never find a salesperson hovering next to you, glibly inquiring, "May I help you?" But, on the other hand, if you truly need help, sometimes it's like a prairie dog colony - you see salespeople all over the place, and then as soon as you open your mouth to ask a question, they're gone. Whoosh.

Two years of acclimatization. And soon we'll be back, and I'll be writing this blog in reverse.  Talking about how no one in America speaks properly or can cope with the cold.  Having the same unease about driving on the wrong side of the car, and actually driving again after two years of not driving. And of course, realizing that although Americans have proper bagels, marshmallows, S'mores, and of course fabulous takeout food (I'm looking at you, Tucson), the grocery stores will seem strange after two years away, and the salespeople uncomfortably clingy, over-helpful, and just plain American.

Time to acclimatize again.