I'm French living in the Netherlands and I learned:
- a kid is a human being and should be respected as an adult. They don't need to be the parents subordinate
- you can disagree without being angry
- my English and Dutch. I can now see all video/ film (tedx / universiteit van vlanderen) without any translation
- Most of the time, you don't need any medicine when you are sick. Sleep, sport and a balanced diet is all you need.
- French have the best food on the planet.
- when hosting, Dutch care more about the atmosphere than the food
- you can learn a language by watching the television (in France, the content is only in French)
Anecdote: they can put pineapple in a 'choucroute garnie'. The Italians version of pineapple on pizza ;)
The cultural shock in all greatness.
The only real pain point is communication, but my Japanese has gotten good enough that I can always express what I'm trying to say, and generally understood what other people are saying. Studying Japanese everyday does consume a lot of time though.
I expect to stay here for a least a couple of more years.
In what particular way were you negatively affected? Loneliness?Homesickness?
Of many interesting observations , I’ll say that it’s taught me that different cultures can have objectively better and worse aspects.
Not everything is better or worse, most things are just different, but some things both here and in my home country make me want to grab and shake people and scream “there is a better way!!”
But also, if you want to live a happy life, you need to accept what you cannot change and plan ahead for disturbances.
Not sure what OP likes to hear, but the most important thing is to live with intellectual and cultural curiosity. I've seen a lot of expats tossing away local peculiarities just because they were conditioned things should have been done differently. In other words, keep remembering about Chesterton fence [0]
I realized there are many, many things about Thai culture I prefer and that I generally get along with Thai people much better than Americans.
So I guess the moral of the story is that just because you grew up somewhere doesn't mean it's the right culture for you.
It's not like everything is perfect here though, far from it. And if you are a miserable person you'll be miserable anywhere you go. A combination of changing myself and changing where I was living is what really has helped me, not just one or the other
Saying the culture is different from my Canadian/British upbringing is an understatement hahaha. I’m still getting used to all the holidays being different (almost forgot about “Tomb Sweeping Festival” this year). The biggest one I’ve noticed is people actually show up on time when you make plans with them. In Los Angeles I’d have 25 people say they’d meet somewhere, and maybe 5 actually show up. Traffic was the main excuse in LA, but with public transit being so great in Taipei I've noticed people flake much less often.
All in all if you’re even remotely considering moving here, even for just a year to pick up Mandarin, I highly recommend it. I doubled my lifestyle and halved my costs compared to LA, and the people here are even more friendly than Canadians.
No, it wasn't. What the Conquistadors (or, rather, Spanish colonial administrators after the Conquest) founded wasn't “modern Mexico”, and the Viceroyalty of New Spain was very much a settler/colonialist state—including the domains of conquistadors like Cortés, who became Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca; in fact an early and important part of the early formation of New Spain was the Viceroys refusal to implement crown-issued laws limiting the extent and permanence of the fiefdoms that had been granted to the conquistadors.
> The U.S. was founded by colonists who came to build a new world.
The British North American colonies (not US, which was founded much later, by people with somewhat different interest who were already the local landed elites) were founded by colonists who wanted to populate an empty wilderness (which it wasn't), and displaced the local population to do it.
The Spanish North American colonies were established by conquistadors (literally, conquerors) who, rather than displacing the local population—or looting and leaving, as you suggest—came to conquer and rule, and did exactly that.
> One could argue that this accounts for the tendency toward short-term goals in Mexico vs the tendency toward long-term goals in the U.S.
One could, if one ignored the fact that the foundational narrative you spun is false. To the extent such a difference exists, its probably because of Mexico’s less developed and less stable status, which rewards long term planning less than a more stable, more developed environment.
The health system, the racism, the poverty, the inequity all amazed me. So did the fact that the US has its own definitions for words like:
Freedom, democracy, socialism, conservation amongst others.
Would not live there again.