Culture Shock

[chasing a dream]

Culture shock is part of the experiance. look forward to it, and make the best of it. Comes with the teritory of traveling.

[thresheld]

When I went to Ghana, I was about 13 years old. We stayed there for two weeks. It wasn's so much culture shock going there as it was coming back.
The first day back, I went into Fry's Electronics. What a mind-job!

[goyincognito]

When I moved here, I had never been outside of the US before...and immediately I found myself overanalyzing every single thing that I saw that was different from what I was used to (and believe me...just about everything is different in some way haha) as a way to sort of stay the culture shock or soften the blow...

and uh well it didn't work. It started to hit me as soon as it sunk in that I was really going to be here for longer than an extended vacation, and the first time each new thing happened, such as the first time I tried to do business--or, for that matter, have a conversation--with Israelis and realized it's more often than not one step down from a fight, the first time I tried to cross the street on foot and almost became a hood ornament, the first time I went to the mall and heard not a word of English, or anything I could even remotely guess at the meaning of, etc.

But then the first time I really realized that I was an outsider here did it. I never felt so alone and isolated in my life. I am always an outgoing, loud, outspoken goofball who never has trouble acting like a dork and talking to no end about anything, but when the culture shock hit me, however, I couldn't bring myself to utter a peep!

I was so completely fucked in every aspect of my personality, everything I did felt weird and out of place...and it forced me to ultimately look inwardly at everything I knew...not just as an American, but as ME fundamentally! I would look out the window and just feel so alone...everything seemed lackluster...and it was exacerbated by the jetlag which made the whole thing feel like a bad dream.

But it went away after not too long...depression quickly gave way to acceptance, which gave way to adjustment, which gave way to adaptation, which finally gave way to absorption into the culture and becoming a part of it And now this is totally and completely my home! (Of course...speaking Hebrew helps quite a bit...haha)

...this probably means, obviously, that going back is going to really suck since I'm going to be hit pretty hard with the reverse culture shock, but I doubt it will suck as bad as it did when I first came here.

That is definitely something I will never forget.

[~transgirl~]

I lived with culture shock for awhile after moving from South Carolina to Hawaii. Same country because of the hostile takeover of Hawaii by a small group of white men, but Hawaii still has it's own very different flavor. Strange though, I didn't notice culture shock until 6 months after the initial joyous haze of just moving here. And it lasted a long time too. A couple years! For like 2 years straight I felt a general sense of annoyance and depression, even anger, having to adjust to feeling like everybody hated me or something....dealing with the fact that in most of the Asian restaurants "good customer service" is considered slopping your food down in front of you and perhaps grunting if you thank them. After awhile you figure out that staying pissed just brings down your life, and you get used to the whole "hate the haole" thing.

[nemesis331]

i've never experienced real culture shock, or atleast i can't remember. although i'm sure i will this summer in europe. while we are in hungary or czech we are going to try to get off the beaten path for a while, see how the people in the countries really live. that is important to me because all cities have a familiarity and are exposed to globalization where many things are relative to other parts of the world. in small towns and villages the outside world hasn't seeped in as much and thats what i'm looking to experience

[Somnambulation]

The only time I can really remember being culture shocked was stepping foot out of the train station in Paris for the first time. I had been to England and Amsterdam in the days previous, but France was the first place that the majority of people didnt speak English. Mabye it wasnt so much cultre shock as a feeling of really taking my first big travelling plunge. But butterj was with me, so we wandered around Paris for a while before we found a place that had free beds.

[nemesis331]

free beds...elaborate on that. haha

where?

[Somnambulation]

Hehe, free as in availible. Although if the game spittin skills are honed enough, Im sure one could thoeretically aquire free accomodation every night. The backpack might give you away though.