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  • Essay / Culture Shock Upon Arriving in the United States from the United Arab Emirates

    I experienced “culture shock” when I was seven years old and arrived in the United States from a country known as the United Arab Emirates, or United Arab Emirates Before coming to the United States, I grew up in the predominantly Muslim emirate of Sharjah, adjacent to the emirate and city of Dubai, world famous. In my neighborhood, many people were either of South Asian or Emirati origin. This means that growing up, everything I saw and heard was either from a Middle Eastern person or a South Asian person. At seven years old, I was well aware of the existence of different types of languages ​​and religions, as many of my neighbors were Muslims and my family was of Hindu origin. My family spoke Bengali, while my neighbors spoke Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam or Tamil. However, that was the extent of my personal knowledge of the world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay When I was a kid, I loved cartoons, so I watched TV. So I watched a lot of cartoon shows such as Dora the Explorer and The Magic School Bus. I followed very closely and frequently interrupted my father watching cricket in order to follow Dora about 'hola', 'uno, dos, thres' and 'rojo' or 'azul'. However, I had never heard these sentences spoken out loud by anyone else. In fact, I had never seen a Hispanic person in my life. And so I honestly believed that the language Dora spoke, Spanish, was an invented language! With The Magic School Bus, I really enjoyed the lessons from teacher Ms. Frizzle. But the reason I just couldn't stop looking at the characters was because they were so different from the people I had seen before in real life! I understood that there was a variation in skin color since my father is on the darker side and my mother is very pale, but I hadn't met people with very different facial features. I had never seen an African in my life, nor a red-haired Caucasian, nor an East Asian. When I first arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport, I was immediately overwhelmed by observing the environment around me. I noticed that there were hundreds of people frantically rushing to various locations. Additionally, I noticed that it was the most diverse crowd I had ever seen in my seven-year life. I saw white people, Hispanic people, black people, East Asian people. There were people from all over the world, which was not common in Sharjah in 2008 and is still extremely foreign in my parents' home country of Bangladesh today. During the three hours my family and I were stuck at the airport, I couldn't help but ask my mother questions about people passing by: "Why does that person have big hair?" », “Why does this lady have such blue eyes? , "How is this family so dark?" are just some of the questions I asked. I was both impressed and frightened by my new surroundings. That year, I was admitted to the first year. I refused to talk to anyone because everyone seemed extremely divergent. Even though I spoke English fluently, I was so afraid to open up. I didn't look exactly like the other kids, I didn't talk exactly like them, I didn't dress the same, so I assumed I didn't think exactly like them either. I noticed a lot of differences from.