Culture Shock Part 1

In general there has been little culture shock as I return to the states but there have a been a few things and I'm sure there will be a few more things over the course of the summer....

answering machines...who would have thought that answering machines would be a problem. Fortunately I haven't yet forgotten what they do, but they sure do scare my friends in Kyrgyzstan who call! We don't really have answering machines in Kyrgyzstan, so when I finally called my friends, a couple of them said that they had tried to call me and then this answering machine came on and they didn't know what to do. So I don't know if they thought they got the wrong number when they heard the answering machine or if the English kind of threw them off or what, but I've been having to explain how to call and leave a message if I'm not home!! And what was even more funny was coming home to a message on the machine saying, "hello, Rebecca? Hello? Hello?, it's me "..." Hellloooo???? click. I guess one more person to explain the wonders of an answering machine too!

Russian language. The other funny thing is watching my parents respond to my phone calls in Russian. Very few of my friends speak English over there, but it happens to be very cheap to call from Kyrgyzstan to America through the internet at internet cafes so all my friends said they'd call me. That made me happy, I love talking to my friends, I just didn't really think about the fact that no one here speaks Russian! So the first time someone called they asked for me and my mom handed me the phone and I immediately launched into Russian and my mom sat there the whole time with her jaw on the floor listening to my conversation. When I hung she just looked at me and said, "The girl who couldn't even say 'si' in Spanish in highschool, just carried on a whole conversation in Russian without even stopping to think or anything...!!" I think she finally understands that I can speak a foreign language....maybe that's why I've tried to learn Russian so well...to prove to my mother after my miserable failures in highschool that I do have the ability to learn another language!!!
So the second time I got a phone call was funny too, because this time I was in the shower. When my friend called (a different friend) I guess she thought I answered the phone, because apparently she said several sentences, while my mom started to panic. She came racing up the stairs and knocked frantically on the door....someone is talking in Russian you got to take the phone!!!! It's weird to realize that I don't even know what it feels like to not understand Russian anymore. And it's weird how quickly my brain just reverts to Russian when I hear my friends voices on the phone. I don't even think about what language to speak in, it just comes out in Russian....I guess that's a good sign!!