Struggling with a New Culture

Jinhyung Kim

ESL100

October 5, 2011

Final Draft

Struggling with a New Culture

Korea and the United States have been trading partners for a long time, and they have been trading many items like technology, education, and money. It means that they also have been trading their culture, so their citizens can find many similarities between Korea and the United States culture nowadays. Therefore, before I came to the United States, I never considered about the cultural differences. I only focused on the different language. Of course, the language was the most important part of the culture that I had to focus on at first, but it was a huge mistake that I did not consider the many other cultural differences. As a result, although I could speak a little bit of English to communicate with people and show my opinion and thinking, I faced a hard time adapting to the new culture.

I found a lot of the cultural differences between Korea and the United States, but one of the most ridiculous differences to me was how people regard age. If people do not know about the culture of Korea, people cannot have a clue what I am referring to about because age is not very significant part for forming relationships in the United States. However, age is the most important part of forming a relationship with people in Korea because Korean culture creates social ranks by age. Also, Koreans define friends are who in the same age with them. For this reason, when I first arrived here, making friends was hard because I never thought that older and younger person than me could be my friend. In addition, if I meet older people than me in Korea, I have to bow to them by making my head down which shows I respect them, but people just greet each other by saying hello in the United States. Therefore, it was also difficult just saying hello to older people than me. However, as time goes by, I am able to greet others by saying hello to people except Koreans who are older than me.

Another cultural difference that I faced and had a hard time adjusting to was the tipping culture. The tipping culture is well developed in the United States, but it is hard to find tipping culture in Korea. Due to Korean and United States trade, nowadays, there are some places in Korea where people can find a bar and hotel can find the tipping culture, but mostly, it is hard to find the tipping culture at a restaurant or cafe. Therefore, I did not have many experiences about tipping, and most of my experiences about tipping were at the hotel where I left one dollar for the house keeper when I traveled in Europe. Accordingly, I did not know how much money I should pay for the waiter or waitress here before I learned about the tipping culture.Also, even though I learned how much money I should tip them, it is difficult to make a decision to choose a percentage for a tip. However, I am getting familiar with the tipping culture as time goes on, and it is becoming second nature.

The last thing that I am struggling with is the construction of houses. In other words, it means a carpet because using the carpet for the floor is unfamiliar in Korea. In Korea, some families use carpets, but it does not mean that using a carpet for almost the whole floor. They use a rug for only the part of their house, and I think that Koreans do not use the carpet to cover the whole floor because they do not enter the house with their shoes. In the United States, however, there are customs some people announced that they did not care about entering with the shoes when I visited their house. On the other hand, some people did not allow me to enter their house with shoes. Therefore, I always had to ask that I could take off the shoes or not if I visited someone’s house, and it was ridiculous to me. It was a small behavioral change that I needed to adapt to the new culture, but it was also a big change because I did not have to worry about it in my country. As a result, I felt uncomfortable visiting friend’s house when I first got to the United States, but now it is not a big deal to me.

I do not want to judge which culture is better or not, but the sure thing is that adapting to a new culture is always difficult and tough. Thus, I struggled with a lot of new things that I had never experienced, which included the different meaning of the age, the tipping culture, and the carpet culture. As time passes, however, I slowly could adjust to them, and now I have started to feel comfortable. However, I know that I will struggle more with the new culture because I am in the United States, and there are a lot of more customs that I had never experienced. Therefore, I want to suggest to people who want to study or live in a foreign country to not only prepare for the linguistic challenges but to try to see the whole picture because the language is just one part of the culture.