As someone that spent the majority of his childhood in another country and had to learn English as teenager, I am quite the uncultured swine when it comes to American culture.

I moved to the U.S. right before I turned 11 years old and this is just a small list of the things the culture shock I experienced.

1. Food

My family and I used to live at a cousin's house for some time while we accustomed to the daily life around here. I remember their food pantry being insanely huge and stacked with different kinds of cereals, canned food, sodas, etc.

As an 11-year-old, do you have any idea how happy I was when I found out that one could easily purchase a whole pizza for under 10 dollars? The thing is, buying pizza is only for special occasions where I am from. You'd have to drive far into the city and be ready to spend a lot of money for that pizza. Essentially, if you are eating something that wasn't made at home every day, you're probably wealthy.

This probably explains the reason why I gained a lot of weight in my teens here in the states, which is a story I'll likely be going over in another article.

2. Television & Films

I'll never forget the heartbreak of finding out that all the cartoons and movies I watched on TV weren't made in Mexico. I always wondered why the Spanish that the characters spoke on TV didn't match the way their lips moved. I mostly watched cartoons as a child, so it was very heartbreaking to see how annoying Timmy Turner's voice was on Fairly Oddparents in the English version and Dexter has a German accent for whatever reason in Dexter's Laboratory.

Don't ask me about American Classics either. You'd only be able to watch them if you had a fancy cable box from Dish or Direct TV where I am from. To this day, I haven't seen the highly referenced film, The Breakfast Club and some folks still freak out when I tell them I never watched Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. I think I saw Flubber once? You know, where that weird gelatinous green thing comes to life. I assume it's a classic since the actor Robin Williams is in it. Then again, I don't really know what American Culture considers as classics.

3. Directional Speaking

This one might be a bit hard to explain. There's something about the English language that always confused me when I was learning it and I don't know what else to call it but "directional speaking." It's the way that we say "shut up, wake up, pick up."

I was in 6th grade when my school teacher asked me to "pick up" my things from my desk. Being the shy little guy that I was and barely having any knowledge of English that I had, I broke down what she wanted me to do. First was the word "pick," meaning to grab so I did just that, I grabbed my stuff. Second was the word "up" so I did that as well, I stood up and was grabbing my stuff at a higher level than they were from the height of the desk. Pick up, right?

Wrong.

Do you understand the confusion? It's weird. Once you think about it, how does the combination of the words "shut" and "up" orders someone to be silent? I guess it's just one of those things that makes sense and you shouldn't question it.

4. School

My favorite scenes from life.

Just kidding, I hated it.

Anyways, getting used to how schools worked was perhaps one of the hardest things to do. Back in Mexico, elementary school goes up to sixth grade. You also stay in the same classroom with the same instructor for each subject. There are no class periods, you mostly do whatever material the instructor decides to teach.

For this reason, I somehow managed to stay in the same math class all day for the first few days that I began middle school instead of going to all of the classes listed in my school schedule. I don't know how the teacher didn't realize that I was staying in her classes all day sooner. Hell. I don't know how I didn't realize it sooner since the kids that came back to class were never the same.

This is just a small list of the things I could think of in regards to my experience with the American way of living. To this day, I still see some things in my daily life that'll confuse or intrigue me. I often ask friends the meanings of certain words that they'll say simply because English isn't my first language. I'll ask about how my friends celebrate American holidays or I'll question aspects of their behavior because it seems awkward to me. I haven't traveled much. As a result, I feel as though I am always a tourist in this country.