Grocery Shopping Makes Me Homesick

As part of my international student orientation, I attended a seminar, along with 800 other foreign kids, about the stages of cultural adjustment.

This was actually kind of interesting (apparently, it’s much easier to adjust if you don’t compare the new country you’re living in to where you’re from; we were advised to simply embrace our new home for what it is and not dwell on the differences. Because that’s a healthy, well-adjusted, and COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC attitude).

Attending these seminars is in itself a bit alienating. The majority of UT’s international students are from Asia – China, Taiwan and Korea in particular (out of the 800 kids there, there was 1 other Canadian). So understandably, life in North America is going to be very different for them, from language and popular culture, to food portion sizes and being expected to make small talk with strangers in elevators.

But for me, North American culture IS my culture. For the most part, Canadians talk like Americans. We watch the same movies, eat the same food, and listen to the same music. And being treated like a foreigner in a place that both is but is not foreign, is weird.

But no matter how similar it seems, it IS foreign. Grocery shopping, for example, is downright traumatic.

Everyone knows you can buy wine and beer in the grocery store in the States. But c’mon, other than that, a grocery store is a grocery store. Right?

I can’t speak for anywhere other than Austin, but buying groceries is DIFFICULT.

It is very hard just to find a grocery store. Do not be fooled by anything called a “Food Mart” (and they are everywhere). A “Food Mart” is really just a liquor store that also sells Cheetos. And maybe toilet paper.

We were advised by International Student & Scholar Services that Walmart sold reasonably priced groceries, so, after not finding anything that resembled an actual grocery store within walking distance of my apartment, I set out to Walmart.

Oh Walmart. If you took the grocery section out of Walmart and made it its own store, it would still, by Canadian standards, be a fucking massive grocery store. So I had high hopes… until you realize that aside from liquor (which is a full third of the floor space) all this massive grocery store sells is chips, pop, salsa, variations of mayonnaise, and frozen entrees (many of which, in a previous life, were deep-fried).

I begin to suspect there is a plot to make Americans fat. And perhaps alcoholics.

Finally, after much internet research, I tracked down a Randall’s, which is somehow associated with Safeway. Finally – something familiar!

I walked to Randall’s, reusable shopping bags in hand. The signage is reassuringly familiar. The layout is exactly what I’m used to. At last, after a week of unsuccessful hunter-gatherer attempts and subsiding on apples and Gatorade, I have found food!

My list was simple. Cereal. Pasta Sauce. Milk. But as I start down the aisles, I discover, to my horror, that even this is not easy. Everything may look the same – but it isn’t. I don’t recognize ANY of the products. In retrospect, I am pleased to learn that I’ve spent most of my life eating Canadian-made food. But here, I have no idea what any of these products are. And even if I think I know what something is, the packaging is completely different, and the pictures on the boxes and labels would indicate that despite being called Wheat Thins, the crackers inside are not the ones I know and love.

This experience could not be more jarring than looking down one day at the right hand you have known all your life, and discovering that it suddenly has 6 fingers and possibly killed Inigo Montoya’s father.

I am overwhelmed with homesickness.

In time, I know I will become familiar with these brands and products, and shop with ease. But I can tell you this about my first foray into the world of American groceries: I don’t know what I bought, but I sure hope whatever the hell Bush’s Bean are, they go well with wine coolers.

LONGHORN FACT OF THE DAY: you cannot purchase alcohol in Austin, Texas, on a Sunday morning. They cannot legally sell it until after noon.