Culture shock!!

This is something we all experience when we go live in a new place. I've known friends who've gone back home because they couldn't live here. I'd probably just laugh at them. But I feel since the western countries are more open to everything, people coming here wouldn't experience much as the people from the other side of the world already have a bit of exposure to the western culture and are in fact even starting to adapt it to a certain extent. I was thinking about this when I had a friend from UC, who's from Chicago over for dinner, last night. She'd been to a village in Gujarat, India part of her undergrad internship program and she absolutely loves that place. We hit it off the minute we met because we had so much to talk about. Listening to her experiences I would say she really did have a "culture shock"! I wish I was there to help her. She had to have some one to teach her to use everything around her. She asked me if someone had to do the same here, but actually, not really because nothing was very new to me except the fact that I was living away from home for the first time! Everything was different for her from relationships to eating habits(eating using your hands), sitting with a male person on a 2 wheeler to celebrating numerous festivals, dressing sense(very important or you'll have people gaping at you) to concepts of a joint families(where they have big houses and there are like 30 family members who live together) I mean this really doesn't exist here. Well, she lived with a family as a paying guest and I feel this is the best way to experience living in another country and I heard from another friend who did that here in California too. I am considering this seriously! Atleast for a while.  I want to learn and understand as much as I can. To finish it off, we had an amazing conversation talking about our experiences so far.