The Adaptation to a New Environment - Essay Example

When I came to the United States about a year ago, I looked almost lost. The culture here is much different from that in Qatar. The food, religion, language, and socialization differ to a great extent. People in the USA are in a rush even to eat unlike in Qatar where one orders for food and eats without a rush to fill. The population is high with everyone busy with their businesses, making it difficult to make random friends. Though there are Muslims in the country, they do not exist in their majority as is the case in Qatar.

I also noted that people value gas highly in America whereas, in Qatar, it costs even cheaper than water as observed by Shadid. Such differences in life are what made the United States appear strange to me during my early days. However, I am lucky I had my twin brother whom I lived with here in the United States. My other brother is still in Qatar and runs family businesses together with my parents. We almost shared the same feelings of loneliness and fear with my brother during our early days in the United States.

Being in a foreign country presented its challenges that would distract us from achieving our goals for coming here. Nonetheless, through sharing our experiences, we found out ways to cope up with such challenges. He would tell me how he has been discriminated against or abused and I would give him similar stories. From this, we learned from each other how well to cope up with the challenges. More so, whenever one learned anything new, he would share with the other. He taught me new recipes he learned and I would tell him of the friends I have made and we would share our experiences and strategies to adapt to the new environment.

This enabled us to learn a lot about American culture and diversity and also learn of the different places and its people.