I lived in China for a year after college, and that was basically fine since I was already pretty knowledgeable about the country and I went into it expecting to be off balance and that there would be a lot of new things. What was a surprise was the culture shock when I came back to the US. I don’t think that the jet lag helped, but I remember feeling really really out of sorts for about a week and just generally in a bit of shock about how different life was here having largely not been exposed to it for a year.

I ordered one once and the waiter didn’t know what I was talking about so I just got a beer. He comes back later with a big smile on his face holding a glass with some liquid in it saying he brought me a pickleback. It was premixed. I shot it, it was a lot of liquid, and only once it was in my mouth did I realize they had used bread and butter pickle juice.