When preparing to live overseas, one learns much about culture shock: the loneliness, the frustration, the crying, the irritability, etc. What one does not learn, however, is that you experience the same thing when returning "home" to live. I found this experience to be even more frustrating than my culture shock in Latin America.
I first experienced reverse culture shock upon returning to the US after 10 months of living in Lima after graduating. One clear instance demonstrates my devistation. I was walking around Borders looking around at the CDs and books when I began to cry. Yes, I cried in Borders. I realized that the CDs I looked at were all Latino Bands and the books I looked at were in Spanish. This is not typical for an "American" girl.
What I felt at this time was an identity crisis. I looked the part of an American, but did not feel like one. Many of my ideas, experiences, perspectives and interests clashed with those of most Americans.
After two months in the US, I could not take being there anymore. Being the spoiled last child that I am, I got my parents to fly me back to Lima. A year and a half later, I returned to the US again with a more prolonged period of reverse culture shock.
The identity crisis continued along with other symptoms of reverse culture shock. Most of these new manifestations occurred in the area of socially appropriate behaviors and relationships. For the first several months, I was overly outgoing and bold. I would say things and do things that were not appropriate in either culture I've lived in. I believe my lack of sensorship was due to the fact that I didn't remember how to act. I wanted so hard to fit in and figure things out that I did it wrong in many occasions.
Building relationships with people caused me much heartache. As mentioned in a previous post, I have had difficulty in developing real friendships with people. Trying to enter into someone's already established life is difficult. I also am having a hard time making friends with males where I live. They are very different from what I am used to. I also do not know how males here work in terms of a romantic relationship. Americans are very different from Latinos in this area.
I am sure I could come up with many more examples, but these shall suffice for tonight. Gratefully, reverse culture shock has diminished a great deal, and I am much more comfortable living in the US. God has been good to me and has helped me through these difficult times.
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Great post . . . my mom and her siblings have mentioned this feeling too. I've heard that a great book is "Third Culture Kids" - geared toward people who have spent a significant part of their formative years away from their "passport country" (http://www.amazon.com/Third-Culture-Kids-ebook/dp/B001NPD54E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1279655206&sr=8-2).
ReplyDeleteI do have a comment. "Many of my ideas, experiences, perspectives and interests clashed with those of most Americans." Since there's a huge spectrum of variety of attitudes and personalities within any given country, what's your basis for believing that you're so fundamentally different from most Americans? I ask because I can relate to the sentence as you wrote it, even though I haven't spent much physical time abroad - I just feel like I'm in the minority in many of my perspectives and my internal journey doesn't always go in the same direction as other people. Do you know for sure that you're as different or alone as you believe? Just curious . . . ! I know a lot of people who happen to be Americans who shudder at conventional or stereotypical majority-culture values.
Third Culture Kids is an excellent book; it really helped me right after I moved to the States to go to college.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it can be hard to make friends wherever you go, especially when you're surrounded by people who haven't traveled much. A lot of people tend to stay in the same socioeconomic classes their whole lives, and that's what I have struggled with. We purposefully moved into a neighborhood known for its melting pot of ethnicities, and our friends couldn't understand that. Where we've been able to make the best friends have been in environments where people have spent a good amount of time in different environments - rich/poor, race, culture, etc.