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Peeraya Rujjanavet
6280143
Academic Writing and Research I
Ms.Mariejoy San Buenaventura
February 7, 2019
A Time When I Made The Strange Familiar

Most of the people have faced situations that you are unfamiliar with. Some have a

difficult time adapting to it, others can easily get along with it. There is a major time in my life

that I made a strange familiar which is when I went to the U.S. as an exchange student for one

year. Though it was not my first time to go abroad as an exchange student, it was the first time

that I stayed alone overseas for the longest and had to adapt to many things.

Now, it has been almost 600 days since I got back from the U.S. but I still remember my

experiences there. I was born and raised in Thailand for 17 years. So, there were many cultures

or traditions in the U.S. that were news to me. Firstly, U.S. people are greeting each other by

shaking hands, hugging or even cheek-kiss which was awkward to me to do this at first.

Moreover, people are very friendly, they are saying “Hello” or “How are you?” to strangers. I

was confused and thought, “Did they talk to me?” because in Thailand we normally don’t greet

the unknown person. But since I did it in my daily life, I became used to it. When people greeted

me, I just immediately said it back and tried to be comfortable using those gestures. Also,

American people call elderly people or teachers by their first names. In Thailand, we always

address the honorific in front of people's names to show respect or make it personal. I made it

familiar with Thai people like me by saying their names like others but with the gentlest tone as

possible to make it polite. Furthermore, on a daily basis, my host dad drove me and my host

brothers to school and dropped us off at the opposite side of it. I had to cross the road every day
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and noticed a strange thing that the car drove on the opposite side of the road from Thailand and

it went the same with the driver seats. It was odd to be a passenger or a walker because it was

contrasting with my instincts. But the longer I stayed, the more I became familiar with it because

I look around every time I travel outside. Lastly, the hardest thing to be familiar to me was the

unit of temperature and distance because they used different units that complicated to convert to

my usual one. So, I acquaint myself by experiencing it. For the weather, I will look at the

weather forecast in Fahrenheit and feel it with the outside weather. Also, it went the same with

the distance because I became familiar with mile by knowing the distance I walked home from

school is one mile. So, when people talk with those units to me I can approximate how cold or

far is it.

I have made the strange familiar by experiencing things that I have never done before and

learning to be comfortable with it. Those situations teach me to become more mature and

increase my critical thinking by using common sense and being open-minded with it.

Nonetheless, there are many situations that we aren't used to, we have to learn and adapt to those

circumstances.