Reverse Culture Shock

Everybody in Cairo warned me about reverse culture shock. When I came home this summer, I only experienced a very slight case. The driving strategies in Cairo are nothing like the driving strategies here in GA. So even though I didn't drive in Cairo, when I came home it felt weird to be in traffic that made such sense. Now I am home again and of course the traffic here still feels a little too organized, but there are other things I am noticing too.
The first one was southern accents. I used to not really care for the southern accent. I was always pleased that my accent was not too southern (though I admit I do use some southernisms such as "fixin' to"). Since I have been in Cairo I don't often hear the Southern accent. So when I come home the sound of Southerners speaking has truly become music to my ears. I have actually found myself commenting on how wonderful certain people's accents are. It's almost like when you hear British people speaking and you just want them to keep talking so you can hear how it sounds. That's how I've felt about southern accents.

The second thing that shocked me was clothing/modesty. I was at a birthday lunch for a friend at IHOP the other day (Happy Birthday Jen!), and two teenage girls were coming out of the restaurant. They were wearing shorts!!! I couldn't believe it. Shocking. Scandalous. Did their parents realize how short their daughters' shorts are? Have those girls no sense of decency or modesty? I looked around at the people sitting near me. No one else even noticed these girls. No one else thought it was weird. And I realized that I was the weird one, not these girls. Their shorts were of a perfectly acceptable length for walking around in public here.