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Culture Shock: Where is a person’s home?

By on September 17, 2009 in Culture Shock

Home is a key word in the whole “culture shock” pavillion. Where is a person’s home? What defines it? Level of comfort? Professional/financial opportunities? Quality of life? Living amongst the people who mean the most to us? Considering the phrase “Home is where you are understood” helps us both close in on and complicate the [...]

Culture Shock regardless

By on July 4, 2009 in Culture Shock

There must be a certain amount of time that dooms you. A certain amount of time that once you go over it, that’s that, you’re done, you’re toast, you are never to feel 100% comfortable in any country ever again. So how many years of living in a country -that you originally consider “abroad”- does [...]

Summer

By on June 2, 2009 in Culture Shock

Summer in Greek means a whole lot more than it does in English. Naturally, everybody has the ability to take time off and enjoy one’s vacations, however, it’s hard for me to think of another group of any sort that maintains such a strong conviction about going on holiday or has such great expectations about [...]

Easter depression

By on April 10, 2009 in Culture Shock

I always got unrepairably depressed at Easter. And the thing about Greek Easter is that it lasts forever. Greek Easter is not just a day and it is not nearly the fun egg hunting activity that cumulates Easter here in the U.S. The greater Easter period starts on Kathari Deftera (Ash Monday). The day on which the [...]

Politically Correct Dating

By on March 17, 2009 in Culture Shock

Singles of any cultural background face the challenges of trying to date in the era of “political correctness”. Don’t get me wrong, us Greeks are the first in line in desperate need of reinstating a background of respect in the way we deal with people. BUT, the state of fear that is linked to political [...]

Grandparents in action

By on March 9, 2009 in Culture Shock

It seems to me, Anglo-Saxons have a great deal less trouble when it comes to the generation gap issue. I cannot picture my grandmother marrying an 80-year-old gentleman she met online five years after my grandfather passed away. (Hell, she can not see herself going online to begin with). I cannot picture her going to a Pilates [...]

Ad talk

By on February 9, 2009 in Columns, Culture Shock

There was one very annoying ad on my tv today. There’s the beautiful lady and the suit-presentable-supposedly-sexy-guy and he is all mushy cause she’s so wrapped up in an air of mystery and has the all-over-interesting aura and is now walking his way, softly on her heels (presumable a stranger whom he absolutely has to [...]

A bright & sunny disposition

By on January 23, 2009 in Columns, Culture Shock

I heard it from quite a few people: Americans, they say, always see the sunny side of life. If you compare the American-English tone of voice with the British-English tone of voice the American tone always fits an extra smile in there. Greek-Americans are somehow caught in the middle between their Greek over-analyzing tradition and [...]

Sweet Holidays

By on January 7, 2009 in Culture Shock, History, New York

photo credit: Rachel Portele The Holiday anti-climax in the U.S. pi**** a lot of people off. The first holiday anti-climax wave comes right after Christmas day and the second hits on January 1st. North Americans feel cheated. “That was it?”, they keep asking themselves. All this fuss, the sales, the marketing frenzy…for what? One lousy [...]

Christmas shopping…

By on December 9, 2008 in Culture Shock

Consumerism is not solely an American plague. It’s pretty much international -for those who can afford it or for those who can not afford it, but do it anyway. Overspending and over-consuming is no-doubt a pretty annoying pre-Christmas habit for Greeks. When it comes to Greek-Americans though it is threatening to become a purpose for [...]

Dress sense

By on November 25, 2008 in Culture Shock

I’m not quite sure where dress sense comes from. Is it a cultural thing? Is it an ideological thing? Is it a stage-in-life kind of thing? No clue. What I will say, though, is that it sort of bothers me when someone rages against “my” dress sense, or better described, the kind of dress sense [...]

Barack Obama: our new President.

By on November 5, 2008 in Culture Shock

I woke up this morning (or should I say yesterday morning) both elated and scared. Dead scared. Elated the moment of truth was here. Scared there might still be a chance it won’t be so. Dead scared. Now, fear is not one of those things neither Greeks nor Americans tend to feel. Me being Greek-American [...]