when i think about culture shock, what immediately comes to mind is our trip back to the states after having lived in nicaragua for a few years: we were all mesmerized by the turntable in a microwave. seriously.

i guess when i came to new york, there must have been culture shock, too. i mean, here there are people with multiple piercings riding the train with people in $4000 suits. there are people who haven't left manhattan in years and those who ride the trains for hours to commute here. there are people who are vegetarians, people who eat jellyfish, and people who refuse to eat anything that has been heated over 115 degrees (the raw food movement... it's weird).

i wouldn't have said that i'm used to it yet, but on our trip to tennesse, michigan, ohio, pennsylvania and illinois (among others), we were hit by some serious culture shock.

take, for example, the breakfast of champions at a gas station in tennessee.

(sorry, i'd never been in a gas station that sold packaged boiled eggs) (forgive me for being so touristy as to take a picture...)

then there was the church with the 60-some foot jesus torso reaching out of a pool of water.

but the kicker was absolutely the restaurant that we stopped in that advertised a vegetable of the day. here's the menu:


forget organic food, people, in this land macaroni and cheese is a vegetable.

(p.s. the macaroni and cheese was pretty good, though. just saying.)