Oh no! Being ill on your birthday sounds rubbish - hope you've recovered now and happy birthday.

Culture shock is totally normal but it sounds like you're getting out there and embracing everything, which is the best way to get over it.

Hope everything continues to improve - really look forward to seeing your videos and post about the wedding this weekend. Give me a shout if you're having any issues uploading videos :)

Well , that IS a lot  to take in all at once.  In India we're facing this all the time because each state is different.  For a year I did in-service training in 13 offices attached to Lotus, a direct selling company that is asia' largest distributor of The World book encyclopaedia and I got to experince 13 linguistic cultures, different cuisine and even dress !  Great fun - Nilima