Directionally challenged? No, just culture shock.

Notice anything strange?

For those of you who know me, I am not (usually) directionally challenged, but for some reason since moving here to PA, I have been hopelessly confused between east and west.

I shouldn't be having this problem.  From a young age my mother instructed me on how to use a map. She was determined that my brother and I became sufficient map readers.   And somewhere along the line we became very good at not just directions, but also being able to orientate ourselves in new cities and places fairly quickly.

Skills that help me do this is really noticing the what is around me and looking for small landmarks that tell me where I am.  Using a GPS with the directionality feature confuses me because I like to think of places and directions in terms of fixed points instead of moving objects.  Fixed cardinal points help orientate me.

Even with all my training as a child at my mother's side and my usually keen sense of direction, when someone here tells me that a certain place is east or west of my current location I automatically think that it is actually the opposite direction.  It takes me looking at a map to figure out my mistake.  Of course, I am slowly getting to know different cities, and towns, and townships, whatever those are, but I still have a lot to learn.

I think the root of my problem is disorienting fact that here on the East Coast the sun sets over the land and not the water (no romantic beach sunsets!?) and, apart from living in Spain I have spent most of my life on the west coast of the Americas where west means towards the coast and east meant inland, away from the coast.  For some reason this has translated in to me associating "west" here to be towards the water.  Which is, obviously, east.  Confusion!!

I hope that with finally figuring out bit of confusion I will soon revert to back to what Pollo likes to refer to as his "human GPS".

This confusion has taught me that not all culture shocks come in the forms of new food and new people and new words.  There are lots of ways to experience culture shock and when you move your entire mindset has to adjust to your new surroundings including some basic concepts of direction and orientation.