It’s ironic that immigration is such a sticky topic in the United States. After all, the US has historically built its population out of naturalized citizens, permanent residents, refugees and asylees, international students and unauthorized immigrants. Between 1860 and 1920, the immigrant share of the US population was about 15 percent. Due to changes in admission rules adopted by Congress in 1965, the number of US immigrants more than quadrupled—from 9.6 million in 1970 to 41.3 million in 2013. Today, the United States and its much-touted American Dream still attracts about 20 percent of the world’s international migrants: It’s why the United States is colloquially known as the land of milk and honey. Around the world, the idea of moving stateside is tantamount to having a better life. (In 2013, immigrants accounted for 13 percent of the 316 million US residents.) But that doesn’t always mean the adjustment is easy: In this Ask Reddit post, immigrants talked about the biggest culture shock they experienced when moving to America. We spoke with them about why they moved, how they assimilated as immigrants, and what they’ve learned from leaving home behind. Yev Pusin, 28, social media producer My family moved to the US from Russia in 1992 as refugees. I was four years old. My family is Jewish, and there was religious persecution in Russia at the time. When we were allowed by the government to leave, [we considered] America, Germany, Canada, and Israel. We [chose the US] because we had the most relatives here and we would have the most help. We didn’t really have a preconceived notion of what America was like before we moved here. We knew that people who moved here were doing OK and had jobs and stuff, but we didn’t really know what to expect. We even brought an axe from Russia because someone had heard from someone that it was hard to get a good axe in the United States. Now in retrospect, it’s funny—I have never needed to use a hatchet here, but in Russia, everyone needs a hatchet to chop firewood and work on your house. We still have it. We ended up in Cupertino, Calif. My grandmother’s cousin found us an apartment, and the Jewish community center had a program where they helped recent immigrants find jobs. So that’s what my parents did, even though they both had master’s degrees in the Soviet Union—when we moved, they started from the bottom. My mother took care of this elderly lady who had a disease similar to Multiple Sclerosis. My dad got a job delivering newspapers in San Jose. The largest culture shock was the amount of food that there was in the grocery stores. There was so much of it and it was inexpensive! And you didn’t have to wait in line! We have this great picture of me sitting at our table with my arms wrapped around all the groceries we bought. Looking at the picture, it’s all garbage and not even complete meals: just a bunch of soda, condiments, and random breads and cheeses. We didn’t know what the hell to buy because we’d never seen this much stuff! Reddit user YevP In preschool, I also licked an African-American kid in class and I got scolded for it—but it was because I’d never seen a black person up close before, I thought he was made of chocolate! As a 5 year old, it seems kind of adorable, but as a 28 year old now, I shake my head. I have very fond memories of these American Dream-type scenarios that panned out for us. These experiences were very formative; my whole family is doing well. My father has his own engineering firm now, but I remember as a kid, being in his little Honda Civic delivering newspapers. None of that would’ve happened if we hadn’t moved here. I think of America as a place where you can have the dream. It’s not given to you on a silver platter—you have to earn it, but it is available. That’s different from the place that I had come from. “I value the fact that if you move to the US and bust your ass, you may not make a million dollars, but you will be able to live comfortably. In a lot of countries, that’s simply not the case.” In the US, there are ways for you to have a good life if you hustle. That’s the biggest thing I look back fondly on: the hardships we went through. We went from poor immigrants who moved here with just a hatchet to now a regular-ish middle class family. We still speak Russian.

Rocky Sebastian, 47, video game developer

We moved to Indiana from the Philippines when I was 10, when my father got a job there as the main doctor for a steel plant. There were 10 of us children, I was the youngest kid.

I grew up in a prominent family: My grandfather co-founded a university with a medical school and a hospital in the Philippines. We grew up with maids and chauffeurs … until I was 10, my yaya (nanny) wiped my butt for me. So, yeah, you could say I grew up kind of spoiled.

When we moved here—those things—I have to do dishes?! There’s a machine that washes clothes?! All that was alien. It was culture shock, but in the end they were just chores.

My parents actually met in New York in 1953 — my dad was studying to be a doctor and my mom was getting her master’s at Columbia. They got married; three of my siblings were born in New York, then they moved back to the Philippines in 1956 and had the rest of us. But growing up, they always knew [we were going to move back to the US]. We weren’t allowed to speak Tagalog in our house, or watch Filipino TV. Despite the fact that we lived like other Filipinos, we were being raised to be Americans.

When we finally moved to Indiana in 1979 the thing I missed the most were my toys that I had shipped from the Philippines. My Voltes V [robot] and all that—I never got them back.

I freaked out when I first saw a girl with green eyes. Blonde hair and blue eyes I’d heard about before, but green eyes! [Subsequently,] I had a thing for green eyes—and red hair—until I a dated a girl with green eyes in high school and that was it. I realized they’re just like other girls. (But I still find them very attractive.)

The fact that water froze if you left it outside was a really big thing for me. So I left a paper cup full of water outside and checked it everyday. I never owned a winter jacket before we lived here. Even wearing a jacket was weird to me!

As an immigrant, just knowing how other [people] lived was so valuable to me. I never experienced [poverty], but squatters lived [near our house in the Philippines].

As for the positives about moving to the US—the good thing about moving here was there were no social classes. And I had really good family values since I grew up in a Midwestern town. The things I learned in school when I was 12 in Indiana— automechanics, sewing and cooking are things that help me the most now in life!

I think being different from everybody else was a positive [in middle America, 1978]. I was the only Filipino in our whole school. Everyone thought I was Chinese because that was all they ever saw—they made Chinese sounds around me, but it never really bothered me and I never really thought it was discrimination. I kind of just went along with it.

I (still) became class president, and was one of the most popular kids in school. I loved my childhood and everything about it. Being different made me stand out.

Moti Billi*, 31, student

I moved from a small village in northern India to Philadelphia because my family was in search of a better life. All my aunts and uncles were already in the United States and England—we were the last family to move to the West. My parents resigned from their stable government jobs and moved here because they wanted to give us a chance at a better life with more opportunities.

I grew up without the Internet and whatever I thought of the US came from newspapers, movies, and my relatives [here]—I now realize a lot of it was incorrect. For example, I saw this Indian movie, Pardes, which was very anti-American. It portrays Americans as people who have no culture or values, and are promiscuous alcoholics who look down on rest of the world.

My relatives reiterated the same thing: Americans like to smoke and drink. And that they don’t have much of a culture. They called America the Golden Cage—once you move you get stuck in the rat race, you can never leave. These were the relatives who immigrated in late 1920s and 1930s and never fully embraced American culture.

All these notions made me more cautious, if anything. As soon as our plane landed on American soil, my mother turned to us kids and told us, “Remember where you came from. Even though you’ll be living here from now on, stick to Indian culture as it is the best one.”

I have funny memories of culture shock. The first time someone asked me, “What’s up?” I looked at the sky to see what was up.

I wasn’t aware that tabloids here usually have fake stories in them. While standing in a checkout line, I saw on one of those tabloids that George Bush was doing cocaine. I shared it with a lot of people and no one corrected me! I read another headline that said a faint heartbeat had been detected in one of the Egyptian mummies. I didn’t share that one with other people, but I wondered for the next few months if the baby had been born yet—I believed anything the media said.

The best thing about America is that I feel safe here. American men are polite and don’t touch me without my permission. I’m not afraid of stepping out of my house after 6 PM, and I can go get cookies from Walmart at 3 in the morning without feeling afraid—it’s an amazing feeling.

Being an immigrant defines who I am, in a way. Even though I’ll most likely never visit my birth country again, I’ll always have an Indian accent and people will always ask me where I’m from.

“I love the US, but I’m not fully American. I wasn’t born here and I don’t get the culture references sometimes. At the same time, I don’t feel Indian either. I feel like I don’t really have a country.”

I’ll always be grateful for the little things someone being born in the first world takes for granted. My experiences in America will always be colored by the fact that I am an immigrant from a small village in India.