Reverse Culture Shock
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But I'm permanently alone in a crowd, too. Always on the outside looking in. Suspicious of the herd. Skeptical of consensus. Circumspect. Cantankerous at times. I am, simply, permanently, "the other".
It's all not bad. You notice things other people don't wherever you go. You're the first person to seek out the people who don't fit in and hold out your hand in friendship. Because you know, deep down, that with all the divisiveness we're experiencing right now, that we will never get through it any stronger without the greatest concern for each other.
When I was in my 20's at college, I would sometimes find the bad part of town and just ride around on my motorcycle. I'd do this when I was lonely and needing that "belonging" feeling.
So, from that early age on the other side of town, I've embraced otherness, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I went back in the 80's to see my uncle, after my grandparents died. The house was falling down around him, but the rest of the neighborhood was in a similar state (still poor, still all black). When I knocked, a girl on a stoop across the street told me "the white man that rides the bicycle" wouldn't be back for a while. So I hung around. Because I was there during the week, instead of the weekend, it felt different. But, I was a lot older, too. I still felt at home, though.
A few years later the church across the screen bought my uncle's house and made it a parking lot. It was a good deal for them, since the house had been condemned by then. I haven't been back to my home city, but I did look at the street on google street view. Made me sad.
That sounds similar to what's happening to my dad's place. The city reconnected a main street to circumnavigate his entire mobile home community a few years back.
I can from experience say it's one that some children of immigrant parents (or parents that moved a lot, and/or both) identify as, when they don't identify with their own culture nor have complete familiarity with their surrounding one (nor have a 'derivative clique' of similar parents-of-immigrants to identify with - though even if they did, they'd likely have a common 'outsider' mindset w.r.t. 'everyone else').
It's funny, iirc the whole "thankful for the outsider's perspective" thing was essay/application fodder for me at one point, and something which I considered might be useful for a particular career path.
All this to say - thinking of yourself as "alone in a crowd" is likely a risky supposition if what you're after is the true state of things. https://xkcd.com/610/
As an American-born Saudi, living most of my life to and fro between the two countries I'm from, I had quite the same experience.
My longest time abroad was a year in Chicago, and the place where I grew up is far too boring to ever be considered 'home', so I really have no idea where 'home' would be for me. But I'm largely just indifferent to the idea.
FWIW: I have many American friends living here in Berlin, and none of them are really struggling with their identity. But it may be different if you never had the experience of being part of the 'native' population... It's probably a similar fate to what members of other minorities (religion/race/disability) experience.
I too think I get better insights sometimes and it let me learn how wrong this kind of border thinking actually is.
I feel like I am an alien on parent earth with no place to call home.
> But I'm permanently alone in a crowd, too. Always on the outside looking in. Suspicious of the herd. Skeptical of consensus. Circumspect. Cantankerous at times. I am, simply, permanently, "the other".
This is exactly where I ended up, there's no going back now, no 'home' where I feel I belong. Biggest contributing factors were hitchhiking across the planet and experiencing Ayahuasca. But I also feel that just understanding the importance of free software as a political right puts a huge rift between me and the people I meet.
A society is built on shared assumptions, a mutual understanding if you will. When you reject an assumption required for participation then you stand alone and the understanding is no longer mutual.
I remember a quote from a Mexican-American movie (Selena) "We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time! It's exhausting!"
It is difficult to live in a new place, you don't really feel integrated even though you have friends, speak the language, go to events, pay your taxes, and get the jokes, you will always be the dane and a foreigner.
A thing I noticed when I was away is how stupid and mundane Danish everyday local politics look, and the same with the news cycle. I think it is refreshing and healthy perspective, and I would encourage everyone to go to another country just to get out of their bubble. And also to get some ammunition against people that keep spouting "If I moved to another country, I would assimilate".
When I returned I had adjusted to British service levels, and how fast it is. I was used to get a coffee within minutes of ordering, and when I went to a store and looked a little out of place, I would instantly get help. I got to observe my fellow Danes as a tourist, and oh boy, I now understand why they all seem to think we are rude, and don't really care at all!
But the most odd thing about being back home is that I don't really feel at home, my thoughts and language is some sort of strange danish/british amalgamation, and I feel like a foreigner, even though I bike the streets of my childhood, say hi to people I went to school with, and walk the forests and beaches I was going on adventures in as a child.
The people I know in Kansas, I can tell that my thinking has changed a bunch in a multitude of dimensions.
But it makes you think of the all the shenanigans of borders, citizenships and all the time we use on discussing who belongs where, and why.
Yup, same thing here. Once you start living in many places, you realize how deeply artificial all these concepts are.
Fantastic country and people, just too darn flat.
That's... surprising. I lived a few years in Denmark, and what characterized the country for me was the extreme anti-immigrant tone of the media and the politics. Now I live in the US, and what is happening with the current POTUS seems pretty moderate to me in comparison.
Actually that's my five cents on the "reverse culture shock": now I empathize much more with the situation of the immigrants back home.
Perhaps the term "a broader perspective" is how to describe it?
Stepping back home (in our case, moving back to Australia after 2+ years living in London) is much the same - you have changed, and home has changed, but you don't expect either to be different.
I think a big part is expectations. When we left, we were expecting something different, unusual, full of surprises (how bad is London coffee?) and annoyances. But returning 'home' you have no such expectations - you just 'expect' to slot back in.
But you've travelled the world, learned a different culture (although I don't profess that in our case it was enormously different), moved on with your life in some way ... and so too have all those people who stayed behind, and indeed the city/town/country itself. So you're surprised, and you were expecting it to be effortless. Shock!
(And it is the weird little things. For the first year I was always one block off with my directions. But thankfully the coffee was as good as I remembered it.)
Of course, he says, Greece hasn't really changed, it's just that now the ex-pats are seeing it through the lens of being 'hyper-Greek' now.
Not just that of the grandparents' time, but an idealised/extremised version of it, blurry and pastel, filtered through the lenses and expectations of those who actually lived it.
The most ridiculous subset are those people who live in Spain and complain about "immigrants" in Daily Mail comments. They may be in for a surprise if the hard Brexit they supported happens and they lose their right to reside in Spain because the UK won't guarantee residence for Spanish nationals.
(+) Not All Expats
The problem is that a big majority of them does not speak the language and, in case of creation of a points visa like some Brexiteers want for migrants coming to the UK, they will fail due to their lack of integration.
It's not a statement about the quality of a place, but really having to go through an adjustment to get used to your new home and then having to readjust back to where you came from (only you keep telling yourself you shouldn't have to since it's your home) and then constant comparisons between places, which you already did as part of your learning of a new place, but now you start to see all the bad stuff about where you're from, but you were used to doing the reverse instead.
It takes a while for all the differences to average out in your mind.
I don't think I've ever had to too bad, but I've definitely spent a few weeks angry at how terrible Americans drive after coming back from Germany, or how bad service is when coming back from Korea.
But I've also had kind of the opposite feeling. After one long stay in Germany, and feeling very foreign, I remember coming home and it not really registering that it happened until I got in the taxi and the driver was playing some R&B. I'm not even an R&B fan but the Americaness of it, after hearing weeks of Europop, hit me like a stick and I suddenly felt very very home.
Originally, it felt... very odd, every time I came back Stateside, especially when visiting the podunk suburb where my parents live (and incidentally, where I grew up).
Going from a city of 13 million that has quite possibly the best civic infrastructure in the world, to an aging and slowly dying town that barely breaks the 80k mark in terms of population is quite a transition.
I think the best way to explain it is... divergence? As in, my path, and the path of that place have diverged. Everything from before that point feels "natural", and everything afterwards feels strange.
Now that I've been an expat for awhile, and have bounced around quite a bit, that feeling of oddness seems to have vanished for pretty much everywhere I visit.
Sure, things are different in different places, but everything seems to fall into a slot of "this feels right" or "this doesn't suit my tastes", and there really isn't anywhere that has a perfect mix of everything.
Although I'll admit, the urge to return stateside has gotten quite a bit stronger over the years. I'm very comfortable in Japan, speak the language, and have a solid social network, but at the same time, I find myself missing a lot of the daily aspects of American life (especially the grocery stores!)
There's a really good article on the subject as well; On Being A Triangle (And Other Tips For Repatriation): http://naomihattaway.com/2013/09/i-am-a-triangle-and-other-t...
I think also, I've been married into Korean life so long, most of my home grocery shopping occurs at big Asian grocery stores anyways, so the experience isn't that much to translate.
What do you miss about groceries in Japan that the U.S. has?
Maybe it's a fair exchange for all the fresh fish though.
Many common ingredients in Western cooking don't exist -- I would kill for a supply of fresh jalapeños, or potatoes suitable for baking (you only find two varieties of potato in Japanese supermarkets).
I can't legally have a barbecue, either, so it's really hard to escape from fried meat here. My cholesterol numbers shot up quite badly when I moved to Japan, even though I'm not that much of a meat-eater (maybe 2-3 times per week).
A decently-sized kitchen with room for a stand mixer is basically unobtainable unless you spend serious money on an apartment, not to mention a proper oven. Japanese homes don't have ovens, so you have to buy your own. Ovens sold for the consumer market here are only slightly larger than microwaves, and while they come with more inbuilt computing power than AWS, simple things like "cook at a low temperature for three hours" are impossible.
I could go on, but suffice it to say: Japan has many wonderful things, but they don't line up with my hobbies and interests.
Isn't Yakiniku fairly common? Though a personal shichirin would probably impossible if you're in Tokyo itself, just as having a BBQ usually isn't an option if you're in Manhattan or London "proper" unless you have a huge top-floor condo.
Japanese cooking definitely seems to be on the fast side though, despite the long and extensive prep'.
[0] assuming you have a balcony which isn't always the case
Not the same as BBQ, but pretty freaking good if you get the rest of the flavor mix right and not fried at all.
One thing that always, always, always happens to Americans when we repatriate is the "grocery store freakout". At some point, you will go to a grocery store, and freeze.
"Man..." you'll keep saying, "Americans really love breakfast cereal..."
I imagine it would be more shocking moving from another country.
Though it's true to some degree, I wouldn't go that far. My sense is that the higher the margin on a product or product-line, the more money the manufacturer and distributors have to purchase shelf space. Cereal, Chips, Crackers, Ice Cream, Mayonnaise.
The last time I was at the store I counted 21 separate varieties of Triscuit, 10-12 flavors over three sizes.
Don't freak out, it actually is weird.
This would imply that other milk-drinking Western countries would also eat a lot of breakfast cereal. And indeed it's something I notice when I go back from China to Belgium or the UK.
(Disclaimer: I haven't been to the US, so perhaps Americans like breakfast cereal even more than Europeans)
US also subsidies milk production to keep prices reasonable, which may have a side effect of increasing the amount consumers will pay for associated products like cereal.
What I find really interesting though is how that's slowly starting to change as other countries start to adopt more of the quick-eat consumerist culture similar to the U.S. What's more fun is that the local solutions to snacks and cereals are usually very interesting and designed for local tastes.
The first time I went to Europe, 20 some odd years ago there really was a slim selection, mostly variants of Muesli mixes. When I was in Russia in the 90s, I really wanted some breakfast cereal and there was a big effort to get milk and some corn flakes. In Germany I had more selection, but not hugely.
The first time I went to Korea about 15 years ago it was the same.
More recently I notice the amount and selection of breakfast cereals is exploding on those countries. Most of my experience has been in Korea, and there are now full-on cereal aisles with an entire list of different products. Not as many as the U.S. but definitely getting there.
So what's fun it that not only do I get to eat all the American varieties, but as other countries add other cereals to their cultural inventories, I get to try and enjoy those as well.
Well, that's how it is when I'm just wandering around the store for fun. If I want to pick a toothpaste, it's frustrating that I need to make a tough choice for something so trivial.
so much space with nobody in it. Everything you need to live under one giant roof. There's 4 people at 4 registers and no line for any of them.
We are definitely not going to the same Walmart.
EDIT: To clarify, I know this is one of Walmart's strengths, but it doesn't improve my experience.
(And I see you'll be paying in pennies.)
</rant>
In this scene, the character has just returned from a tour in Iraq defusing IEDs. The movie portrays him as a total pro in the battlefield, but stunned and anxious as he returns to civilian life. Great movie not just about war, but about the psychology of war and purpose.
Edit: here's a better dissection – http://www.cinemablography.org/supermarket-scene.html
One night while I was asleep, there was a clap-clap-clap next to my window at 3 AM in the morning. I just assumed it was some old guy exercising early in the morning by clapping and walking backwards...not a weird thing in Beijing. I ran outside ready to confront whoever it was, and it was just...water drops hitting a leaf.
One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing, but I feel like I went into a coma and woke up 20 years later in a world I can barely relate to. As an example, I'm thinking about stuff like Miley Cyrus' performance. And a lot of the social justice stuff -- I really just missed a whole lot of it and I've literally had to learn tons of new words and concepts to catch up and not appear bigoted. Living abroad in a more "conservative" culture and then coming back and adapting with a snap of the fingers is tough. The weird thing is that I was considered "very liberal" when I first left the US.
The hardest thing of all is perhaps how violent and aggressive and loud and rude Americans can be (in public, to strangers). It can be downright frightening, coming from Asia.
Edit: Also, I can't stop bowing to people. Asian Americans probably sometimes suspect I'm racist.
One wonders, if the rest of the world is more cautious about this sort of thing, if maybe it's America that's in the wrong. Maybe other cultures deal with these things more sensitively or more rationally or just better.
My experience travelling abroad is that people seem more comfortable in their skins, which is sad given that America is supposed to be the place where anyone can make it.
Try doing that with a disability, being a visible minority, being a woman, etc.
America is far from perfect, but it's at least accommodating. In other countries they don't hesitate to throw people to the curb.
It's the little things: The wheelchair accessible stores and streets, the effort made to deal with vision impairments, institutions that are fighting for women's rights and so on. There are some places in the world where people with disabilities do not seem to exist, they're always hidden away.
The amount of homeless, jobless, bad education, a meme president and all that is nothing you find in 'your usual developed nation'
What makes it seem worse than it is has been the way these unemployed people are highly clustered today. There's counties with 50-60% unemployment, but they're low-population so they don't skew the national rate all that much. It certainly sucks to be in one of those affected areas, and I know people who are stuck there, but the big picture is a different thing.
America is far from a homogeneous thing, but it's also full of opportunity if you're able, willing and prepared to move to them.
Wheelchair accessibility is simply not a thing here, not even in Vienna and Berlin (let alone small towns or rural areas). E.g. you will often find the bathrooms in restaurants or cafes to not be accessible without going up or down a bunch of stairs.
Another example: get out of the big cities (and sometimes even just get out of the central areas of the big city!) and try to get vegetarian or vegan food in a restaurant. Sometimes the waiters won't even know what that means (when speaking in German, so not due to a language issue).
But the downside is that they're not nearly as livable as new construction. Disability access is one. Nobody's going to install a wheelchair ramp in a 500-year-old building.
Here's another: air conditioning. I'm from Dallas and still live here, but my family is from New York City. I visit my ancestral home every few years, and what really jumps out at me every time I visit is the lack of central air conditioning. In any residential part of Manhattan, all you have to do is look up, and you'll see hundreds of room air conditioners hanging out of every building. The house in Westchester my aunt and uncle lived in when I was a kid had neither central AC nor heating; I have memories of staying in the guest room with this ratty old radiator grill that was encrusted with unidentifiable gunk. Actually, that whole house just felt ancient. Visiting my aunt and uncle felt like walking into a time machine because of how old their house looked and felt.
You don't see places like that in Dallas. Dallas is a pretty new city; the city proper didn't reach its current borders until 1977, and the suburbs were mostly farmland until the '80s and '90s. The northern part of Dallas where I grew up was built out in the late '70s and '80s, after central AC had become standard. The suburb where I work wasn't built up until the '90s and the '00s, and there are places not too far north of here that were built this decade. Everyone has central AC and heating here. The idea of going without is ludicrous, because all our construction is new enough that central AC and heating were incorporated in the design from the start. Now, yeah, the sweltering climate has something to do with it; state law requires landlords to provide AC at all times, and it's actually a crime for them to fail to resolve complaints about a broken AC within a certain amount of time. But a lot of it is just because Dallas is mostly newer construction.
It's just not hot for a long enough part of the year to be worth the expense.
In most of Europe, it's not uncommon for trans women to be forced to crossdress in public in order to get hormones. It's not uncommon for trans women to be denied hormones for a number of stupid things: if you're attracted to women (you have to be 100% straight to get hormones in most of Europe), because the outfit they wore to the doctor isn't feminine enough (you have to be wearing a dress), because you have no interest in bottom surgery, because you don't specifically hate your penis, because you didn't play with dolls as a kid, because you've had any sexual thoughts about being a woman. You have to go out of your way to prove to the shrinks there that you're trans enough, and their standards are so ridiculous that they'd tell 90% of cis women they're not really women.
It varies by country. Denmark and Finland are the absolute worst about this. Denmark in particular has been condemned by Amnesty International for this [0]. Norway is pretty bad, but I've heard stories of people who found a sympathetic GP who's willing to go around the law (in Norway, it's illegal to prescribe estrogen for transition outside the gender clinic system, but a doctor can prescribe estrogen for other reasons, and doctors don't have to report their prescriptions to anyone). I've heard Spain is one of the least-worst countries, actually, so much that trans people from other European countries actually go to Spain for treatment. Same goes for parts of Eastern Europe (estrogen might even be OTC in some Balkan countries). The UK used to be horrible, but they've gotten better in the last 2-3 years or so, which is entirely thanks to a single private doctor (Dr. Webberly). In Germany and France, it depends on exactly where you live.
In the US, I can just walk into any informed consent clinic or in some cases the offices of certain GPs, sign a paper that says I know what I'm getting into, get my blood taken, and walk out with a prescription for estrogen once the bloodwork comes back.
Oh, and in some European countries, you can't even legally change your name unless you've had surgery. I know this is the case in the Czech Republic (you can take a gender-neutral name, but you cannot take a female name if you have testicles). It's sad, because access to hormones is better in the Czech Republic than in most of Europe.
[0] News article about it in English: https://www.thelocal.dk/20170303/amnesty-slams-denmark-for-d... -- Amnesty International's actual report, in Danish: http://amnesty.dk/media/2263/amnesty-transkoennedes-adgang-t...
With free health care here I would imagine when you do get prescribed, the price is next to nothing. Even though you are jumping through more hoops here, in my opinion it's better to make it affordable than the insane prices the US has and easier.
It's like America gets a B/B+ at least in most categories where some countries are more like A/A/D.
That said development is not a simple linear scale. Each culture has good things others could learn from, but it's wrong to see low development level as some kind of purity.
In my local stores there are feet of cereal aisle that all seems largely overkill. When I go to a suburban grocery store there are yards of it. I'm always baffled.
This is MUCH easier in a big city of course. Houston is surprisingly good in this regard: not only can you find all kinds of groceries, but the restaurants serving different cuisines are absolutely terrific.
I am an American living in Japan and enjoying all the trials and struggles of living somewhere utterly different from where you grew up. In Japan I'm American, however back home I am Asian-American. Among Asian Americans I'm further subdivided into another category. I have very few close friends of my own ethnicity and those that I have I would consider as just Americans anyways. The thing is that even with people of my own ethnic group, I don't have much to relate to since I don't speak the language and I grew up somewhere completely different. I discovered after coming to Japan that the thing I relate to the most is being American. However it's funny that in the US I knew I was American but I always felt I had to put an asterisk on that or a hyphen since I wasn't part of the majority.
My point is that I've always felt as somewhat of an outsider no matter where I've gone, but still I have a concept of home and that is the US. I think it took going to somewhere completely different to REALLY cement my own self-identity and self-image.
Coming here I had no idea what I would come out identifying as culturally, but I think it should have been obvious that it's the place that I grew up in and spent most of my time despite feeling like an outsider at times.
I'm likely going to go back home soon for many reasons (culture differences, language barrier, heavily reduced respect/pay for programmers over here, missing friends/family) and I'm curious how I will handle the reverse culture shock. From this experience though I'll gained have a stronger identity and how important being an American is to that.
And I'm jealous that you know about the reverse culture shock. Gives you some time to prep for it. I'd be really curious if it helps. For me and probably many others the reverse shock was actually much worse. Took me about a year to get any kind of life back. And it was really disappointing that all the new things you've learned you couldn't just not really share with old friends and family, they don't really care. Otherwise they would've taken the trip with you, right? So for them you are not the smart, cool guy who managed to do something extraordinary, you're the idiot who did lots of crazy things and now pesters them with all of the experience they could have told him before would be troublesome and weird.
What helped a little was having contact with expats in the other direction who I could communicate with after returning face to face, and keeping all my friends from the foreign country at least digitally close by.
Good luck with returning! Hope it works better for you.
Uganda was colonized by the British so the official language is English, I grew in the capital city (a different tribe from mine with a different culture and different language ) so back home when I visit my relatives who live far from the city (my ancestral home) I feel like a foreigner (they used to call us `city borns`).
Here in France, the French expect most black people to speak French and know about French culture (they colonized a number of West African countries ) but again in our country we speak English so you feel awkward and out of place.
To make things even more complicated my fellow East Africans (Kenyans, Tanzanians) speak Swahili so when they meet you they have this Swahili vibe but again Ugandan's don't speak Swahili we speak English... So a foreigner at home and a foreigner abroad, HN is home :-).
No credit card machines, nothing resembling customer service (I'm talking actively rude or disinterested store attendants), Nightmarish traffic since traffic signals and lanes are just a suggestion and not enforced by police, Hyper religiosity, rampant and casual homophobia (they're all convinced America is going directly to hell because of gay sex), truly shit roads, with cars that shouldn't be on the road EVERYWHERE, right beside Lamborghinis and Mercedes, barely-there running water, internet and most importantly, unpredictable electricity supply and the ever present drone of diesel generators that supply power to individual houses because the electricity supply is so useless.
It was too much. I've never been so happy to see a starbucks in my life.
My family ask me every week, when I'm moving back. lol
When I visited India for a couple months in 2004, it took me a couple of tries to even be able to go out to the street (in Delhi). But after a couple days I started getting used to it and a week or 2 later it was "fine" and not really that shocking (albeit still annoying at times).
So. Much. Traffic. People packed into trains. Everyone so...not exactly rude, but not nearly as friendly as I've grown accustomed (I live near Boulder, Colorado).
I feel like my blood pressure is higher the entire time I'm there. Of course the air pressure is higher, so that may have something to do with it, but I think it goes beyond that.
On the other hand, I've never been in great shape, and the first day down at sea level and I feel like I could run a marathon...
I can deal with traffic.
I can deal with the pedestrians and cyclists.
I can deal with the slew of drivers who thought signaling was optional.
I can deal with paying for parking.
But holy shit the lack of paid off-street parking lots in numerous parts of the city bugged me, alongside the absurdly inexpensive on-street parking. I never understood why the city didn't raise the price of on-street parking spots given the demand. The city which I currently live in has 4x the population of SF yet it's significantly easier to find parking spots in most parts of the city as the parking rates properly reflect the true cost of parking.
Public transit is the only sane answer. That's why I mentioned trains. When I'm in the Bay Area, if I'm going to San Francisco, I simply refuse to drive there at all.
Hotels have gotten insanely expensive in the City proper as well; when I go to events in San Francisco, if I'm paying for lodging, I'll often get an AirBNB in Oakland near Bart and take that in. Instead of $300/night, I get a nicer place for less than $100/night, and the BART ride is only about 20 minutes.
But what I can't stress enough is how severe it can be. I went and lived in various places around the world for a decade, from about 23 to 33. The place I settled down most was in Ecuador, where I learnt the language, met my long term partner, and made some close friends and integrated with the culture. But I spent years in Europe, the USA, and Asia too.
All of the above was achieved just by coding software and selling it off some wordpress websites I put together.
And now I've been back in New Zealand for exactly 3 years, and it's awful. Life is so repetitious and small and boring. I've never been more miserable. And it's for the same reasons in this article, and that other people are mentioning in this thread.
The funny thing is that before I left I had no particular desire to go (I just did it because it was easy and my friend wanted to), and I was happy. But now, because I have had those life changing experiences, I'm not.
At the supermarket I worked at when I was 16 were some of the same people, working the same cashier job.
Friends were still talking about "getting back into college," doing the same thing they had done every weekend for years.
It depressed me.
I disagree that the jarring bit about home is
that it's changed. For me, it was that so
little had changed.What I notice going back to the USA is how it often feels like the 3rd world countries my dad would tell me about as a kid indirectly trying to tell me how great the USA is.
Now I just see crime, corrupt police, etc. Came back for 6 months got my car broken into twice. Once in LA, once in SF. Try to hang out at a coffee shop to work but have to pack up my stuff and give up my seat to use the restroom because otherwise my computer will be stolen. I never feel safe riding public transportation in SF where as I never not feel safe riding in Japan.
Another is convenience. After 9:30 in Venice Beach, if I haven't eaten by 9:30 nothing is open except 24 supermarkets in have to drive miles to. Compare to Tokyo where there's almost always a conveniece store within 5 minutes and they actually have reasonably good options.
Food is bland and large. Americans seem to prioritize quantity over quality in general. At least in the suburbs.
I could rant about Japan too but the topic is reverse culture shock.
I lived in Gunma for several years, for what it's worth. That was about a decade ago.
Mannerisms can be very noticeable if you're attuned to them.
Students chuckling: https://youtu.be/4LUumD0MwL8?t=48s
I don't know if this played any role in your experience but that seems to be what I have been hearing around me...
Walmart went from "Who?" to "OMG this place has everything!"
Finally got to eat Pop Tarts again.
I feel home at some aspects of each country: Respect for pedestrians (US), friendly warm helpful people (TR), diversity in food and people (US), a hometown where I'd love to live my last days on earth (TR), rich language (US), humble people (TR), startup and business culture and experienced people (US), paradise like vacations (TR), optimism and good luck surface area (US), family (TR).
Essentially, you subconciously collect "likes" about each place where you spend a sufficient amount of time.
The food in this place, the coffee shops somewhere else, a street market culture here, the women/men there. A language, the climate, pace of life and attitudes from other places.
With time, the mind constructs its own personal Shangri-la (which contains _all_of these things) and you, explicitly and/or implicitly, spend the rest of your life dissatisfied with the delta on your actual experience.
In practice, for me this has been more of an "ah... that's happening, heh" thing that I observe going on in the mind rather than a difficult-to-live-with curse.
I'm curious, however, what the effects will look like another 10 or 20 years in. I suspect it could grow worse with age as we are able to travel and do less? That's hopefully just a matter of managing perspective, though.
The article talks about things having changed when you get back. I'm not so sure that's the big issue. I think the biggest problem is that you yourself have changed so much, and your views are greatly expanded. While when you come back, nothing had really changed. That local grocery store is still there, and things are pretty much exactly where they were all those years ago.
I feel some of this every time I go back to visit my family, and at the end of the trip it feels very relieving to go back.
I think if my home country looked very different, as they suggest would be a problem in the article, going back would be a much more exciting experience.
> things having changed when you get back.
> I'm not so sure that's the big issue.
As for handling changes to your home country upon your return, it really depends on the situation. A San Francisco native who leaves in 1972 and returns in 1979 wouldn't have much trouble, compared to one who who leaves in 1962 and returns in 1969. It would be pretty disorienting to find your hometown now has a radically different culture.
That said, I have no opinion on which is a bigger issue.
Wal-Mart absolutely blew my mind. Also, America is huge.
1. Keeping up with family via Facebook
2. Getting an AFL streaming subscription
Coming back to the US, no real problems adjusting. Maybe I didn't stay in Europe long enough or popped between cultures with enough frequency to not have anything "imprint".
> the psychological, emotional and cultural aspects of reentry
I thought "reentry" was an odd word choice here. I immediately thought "mission to Mars".
Right now I'm in the process of moving to another city and can appreciate a lot all the things I learned about culture shock and can handle it quite well, e.g., the overpowered feeling of loneliness that sometimes hits you really hard, or that you must be careful about sharing experiences since others don't consider the same things weird as you.
The advice that "People at home aren’t as interested in hearing about your foreign experience as you are in telling them about it" also resonates with me and can be a tough pill to swallow. In some ways it's similar to oversharing upon returning from a holiday. It shouldn't hurt too much when most people don't care how amazing or difficult it was. When your foreign experience is part of your identity it can be easy to take that disinterest personally. If you look/sound/act at first impression as the other culture it can feel like every introduction starts with satisfying the person's curiosity. When that curiosity is immediately followed by disinterest the incongruity can be jarring. For my partner's reentry I suggested that we have a short one sentence answer explaining where we were so that the conversation could move on quickly and save the rest for those who are genuinely interested.
I think wtbob's comment that "It's not about better/worse; it's about different." is very helpful. There is a time to compare and denounce the absolute and relative merit of an aspect of a culture but it can be unhelpful if those criticisms are just an outlet for frustration.
For the cross-culturally mobile parents in the crowd please please please consider that your children's experience might be very different than your own. The Reverse Culture Shock - Managing Reverse Culture Shock page [1] has lots of practical advice. I also highly recommend reading Third Culture Kids : Growing Up Among Worlds [2]. I would also recommend it to those who are reflecting upon their own childhood intercultural experience.
[1] https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/tc/c56076.htm [2] http://www.crossculturalkid.org/third-culture-kids-excerpts/
Sad they had to call out these specifically. When I moved back to the US and landed in San Jose (South Bay Area), I thought I was smart and would live "downtown." I only lasted 3 years before meeting a European woman and moving to a very culturally different part of the US.
But what's nice about it, if you can engage with it this way, is the fresh perspective on your (formerly) habituated world this state can offer.
- sky here is always blue
- drivers in EU are kinda annoying stopping and letting me pass when just standing next to crossing even when I dont really intend to cross yet
- streets are completely empty
- sidewalks are empty, not full of trash and people occupying them with their illegal stuff
- cashiers are kinda lazy, you have to take stuff out of your basket and put it on moving belt, already used that in China cashier was doing everything
- shops are closed half of the time, very ealy in evening, almost all weekend, not open 7 days a week like in China
- almost nobody stares or pay attention to my nonwhite wife despite currently staying in very small town, I was being stared at all the time even in cosmpolitan Beijing
- people here in EU in general are very soft and weak caring too much about others instead of being selfish, more agressivity would be sort of welcome, though it is to my advantage
- cars have to wait for dumb green light when turning right (always green in China)
- I can go straight from my apartment to train or subway without single check, unlike like 7 checkpoints in Chinese train station
- cash is still very common when buying things like ice cream though Visa paywave is very convenient in bigger shops, just touch terminal and you are done, in China you can live with Wechat payments in your phone but very inconvenient with scanning QR codes instead of just touching card to terminal in Europe
- even in very small town you can find people speaking English or at least some basics, you would have trouble even in cosmopolitan Beijing, dont dare in some smaller place
Overal I am glad I moved back, though life in China was more easy going and less serious, because it was considered more like videogame than real life, because we all know as foreigners there is no future there and you have to go back sooner or later.
It happens between cultures, even when neither of them are American. It can even happen if both are American if the source and destination are different enough (e.g. moving from a farm town of 500 in Wyoming to Manhattan).
That's completely not it at all. Culture shock is what happens when one visits another country and realises that certain things one takes for granted aren't, and other things one thinks are negotiable aren't. It's the same phenomenon which young historians have when they first read of a technologically advanced, trading culture which also casts every firstborn child into a furnace (e.g.).
Reverse culture shock is the same phenomenon, when one returns back home. It's caused by the fact that one has assimilated to one's guest culture to some extent, and upon returning home … one finds that certain things one had grown accustomed to taking for granted are not, and other things one had grown accustomed to thinking negotiable are not.
An example is the wide variety of cereals in American groceries, or the limited variety of organ meats. If one has grown accustomed to just buying 'müsli,' and one suddenly has a dozen different varieties, one claiming to be good for keto diets, one claiming to be vegan, another gluten-free, another paleo — that's a culture shock. If one has grown accustomed to making kidney pie, then returns to America and must make a conscious effort to source kidneys — that's culture shock. If one has grown accustomed to horse or whale, and returns to find that they are illegal — well, that's culture shock too.
It's not about better/worse; it's about different.
Look harder, and expand your search to more than three blocks from the highway exits.
> It's simply