Culture Shock in the US?
Coming back after 7 months abroad; what I experience on the daily.
People keep asking me if I have culture shock coming back to the US.
The answer is, yes, a little.
I have been back for a couple of months now and I feel an underlying sadness and disconnect.
Before I tell more I want to explain culture shock.
What is it, actually?
The term sounds like sudden intense stress you get when living in a foreign country.
But that isn’t it. The term is misleading.
I actually studied it in grad school. Culture shock starts a few months after you live in a foreign country.
It is a kind of malaise and depression.
The first few months you are on a kind of high. Everyhing is new and interesting! Adventures just by living. New insights, new friends (hopefully) new food.
Exhiliaration of new adventures daily just by living!
Boredom isn’t really possible.
But this wears off and you can feel disconnected, lost, ungrounded. If you are not fluent in the language, even if you speak well, you miss jokes, intimiate converstaions, shared background and culture.
You miss comfort food.
Really you miss a sense of deep belonging. Mild depression is common.
It usually passes in a few weeks as I recall.
I experienced in in France when studying a year abroad. About 5 months in I got fairly depressed and would regulary go to McDonalds to feel more at home.
So how about back in the States?
I feel oddly bored and I miss my friends in Tangier.
I miss the accessability to my freinds.
I could see them almost any day. And every day could have a meaningful chat with people who recognized me as a neighbor.
This is really lovely.
I miss being able to go out at any time and walk around feeling part of the community.
Talking to shop owners who recognize me, talking to strangers in cafes, watching families and children playing.
I had open invitations to visit a hostel I where I lived and a cafe owned by people who became my friends.
And I would regularly see the same shop owners who greeted me every time I walked by their shops.
The streets are alive with people, cats, dogs and activity. In Tangier and also in Paris, although not so many cats :)
It’s like part of me has resigned myself to a kind of loneliness.
It was worse the last time I came back from Europe. I felt really lonely often.
I realized that being a single person and in a car much of the time, I was missing the feeling of being part of a community. Even in communities that I know well here in the US.
This time I mentally prepared myself before coming back to the states and anticipated the change:
To car living and anonymous encounters with cashiers in corporate owned stores replacing seeing the same baker and cheesemaker every day or week.
To being around people generally rushing by on their phones or with earbuds. And the lack of being surrounded by vibrant living as soon as I walk out of my apartment until late at night.
I'm still glad to be back and it's good for me now. I'm not intending to 'trash' the US.
But I'm trying to paint a picture and even understand myself why I feel this way.
That’s all.
Comments and questions welcome. Have you experienced this, too?
I experience this, too, in my years of nomadic living and times back in the States (and also abroad)! There was a time here in Albania that I was craving Burger King so badly (last had at the age of 12), and this explains it LOL. So interesting to hear a deeper explanation of culture shock, but also the elements of vital living found readily elsewhere.