Job Discussion Forums

[Gawain]

Word to newbie expats: Culture Shock is very real. Enchantment phase doesn�t last. Beware Rejection phase. Aim for Acceptance phase. Beware Re-Entry Shock. I taught for years overseas. My stress and anger, overseas and in USA, is caused by Culture Shock.

Here�s a couple good articles on Culture Shock:

http://www.johnsesl.com/templates/reading/cultureshock/

http://www.britishexpat.com/expat_services/cultureshock.htm

I think effective treatment for culture shock involves retreat and escape. When traffic in Taipei drove me nuts, it helped to retreat to my cable TV, order pizza and watch HBO. Now stuck in America, I disagree with everything my fellow Americans do and say, so I wear ear plugs on my lousy minimum wage temp job, so I can ignore my retarded coworkers. �Hey man why are you wearing earplugs?� �So I don�t have to listen to you retarded American gits!�

After years in Asia, now back in USA angry and broke, I am reeling from �re-entry shock.� I am alienated by Americans today. Neocon coup d�etat, evil Christian Theocracy, SUV-drivin� gits. Feel like Captain Kirk and Spock when they beamed down to Nazi Germany. Feel like Lee Harvey Oswald when he came back from Russia. Read Gerald Posner�s CASE CLOSED: Oswald suffered culture shock in Russia, then returned to Texas where he suffered severe re-entry shock.

Now I sit in my temp slave cubicle wearing earplugs, and whenever anyone asks me to do any work, I stare at the floor like Bartleby and say: �I would prefer not to.�... �I would prefer not to.�

Should I stay or should I go? You got to let me know. Should I cool it or should I blow? Choose a new nation for more visa hassles, apartment hassles, miscommunication and low pay, or stay in USA and get prescription for morphine?

[Roger]

Some turn misanthropic.

[Deconstructor]

Gawain,

That's pretty depressing but totally understandable. Ultimately there is nothing worth doing under the sun except MAYBE traveling. Perpetual travelers realize this almost subconsciously, spend years around the globe, come home and discover that none of their desires has been fulfilled, that even traveling is a farce. They know that they are a candidate for Candide. At an early age travelers begin to suffer from a Baudelairean ennui, a sense of profound uselessness in the face of unjustified existence.

So we went so we saw so we did so we returned so what?

I like your reference to Bartleby the Scrivener, one of my all time favourite short stories. I even wrote an essay on it.

[dmb]

Doesn't culture shock depend on the individual and the culture. I've spent over 10 years in Turkey and I have never sufferred from it. However the Gulf did freak me out on more than one occasion and hence only spent 18 months there. I do agree about reverse culture shock. I went back to the UK a couple of weeks ago and was soooo glad I didn't live there.

[Guy Courchesne]

I think reverse culture shock hit me harder going back to Canada than my initial landing in Mexico did.

Living in Mexico City with its 20+ million inhabitants made even Toronto feel like a small town going back. The thing that struck me most going home to Ottawa was simply walking in the street, getting used to order and far less people again.

Waiting 15 minutes in blistering cold for a city bus in Ottawa... That was hard. Here, city busses are mostly private, not public, so they pass every 30 seconds or so.

[Deconstructor]

I don't usually suffer from culture shock . I am pretty adaptable . But I do become homesick. Miss my family like hell. When overseas, I wanna go home, when home I wanna go overseas.

Where the hell do I belong?!

[dmb]

I think you are right about the size of city. I'm used to Istanbul(17 million people?) so when I returned to my home city of Edinburgh(500,000) I thought the fact that people don't drive bumper to bumper and cut people up in traffic was a bit weird/abnormal

[Deconstructor]

Speaking of adaptability, once I left Canada, where I had an extremely comfortable existence, to a hell hole where I lived on the fifth floor of a building that had no elevator and each staircase had 35 steps. It was left behind from the old communist regime. Their imaginations didn�t ascend the way, say, an elevator.

Every morning at 5 am I would get up 10 minutes early just to go down and once down, I�d feel dizzy from constantly turning on the staircases. Then I�d walk 30 minutes to the train station where I would get on a 45 minute train ride to a nearby city. Once there, I would walk another 30 minutes to a military compound where I would conduct a 3 hour class to extremely dense cadets. During a reading activity one of them once asked me:
�What usa?� He pronounced it oosa.
�Ha?�
�What usa?�
I went over only to discover that his mind had gotten itself all tangled up over USA.

The only conciliation was that this was a town where Nietzsche was born, so I would often pay homage by going to the house where he was born. I was in Halle (or Hell) East Germany but I often worked in Naumberg, Nietzsche�s birthplace.

When in hell, things never seemed that bad. Once out of hell, I realized, �God that WAS hell�. This is one of the rare cases when realizing things only ex post facto is actually beneficial, not to mention a great defence mechanism whenever in hell where we EFLers often end up.

[dmb]

I guess taxis were expensive

[Deconstructor]

[moonraven]

The only place where I have experienced culture shock was the USA--supposedly my "home" country--and it was very severe.

(Admittedly, I have not been in too many countries--most of Europe and much of Latin America only.)

[Girl Scout]

The biggest problem with reverse culture shock is how thing change. If you get a new pres. or p.m. while your gone, or worse if you missed 9/11 and its aftermath when you go home everthing seems so different. The people, the goverment even the way you go about daily routines. I also found many of my friend could not relate to what I had been doing.

They put in a new intersection and highway in my home town and I found that disconcerting.

I have to say reverse culture shock was a lot worse for me then the intial shock moving to Asia. I have to say it was so bad I ended up moving back.

[KiteBiker]

After my 4 years in the Middle East, coming back WAS a shock. I drove like an Omanie - which lasted approximately 2 weeks before I got pulled over by an off duty officer and was actually the subject of road rage : "WHAT? Wasn't that light RED enough for you ..." yadda yadda .. etc. Then he drove off.

The hardest time I had was not staring at women. I know it bothered me while in the Middle East, having all these South Asian guys stare at me and especially at my wife. Made her extreemely uncomfortable. Everyone was veiled and "cloaked". Then when I hit Ontario in the summertime - WOW. Look at all these FACES. And never mind the pierced belly buttons. I know now why we were stared at so much. And how it came to be.

My most embarrassing moment while in the Middle East was during my first couple of months. My "handler" from CfBT was trying to get a hold of me by phone. The phone system is notorious over there and I would just get a ring and then dead air once I answered. Finally I had had enough and I threathened whoever was on the other end of the line that I would hunt them down like an animal if they harrassed me like this again. Finally she got through and the first thing I hear on the phone was her in a very uncharacteristically earthy tone "It's ya phone, DOOFUS!". This from a PhD in education and lingustics. That snapped me out of it.

[stevenabroad]

You definitely have to quit right now and find a ESL job in Asia...not necessarily in that order

Culture shock generally amounts to wanting the best of both worlds at different times and not being able to have it. There will always be things you want that you can't have where you are. This is why you left in the first place and why you ended up coming back. In your case after a few months back in Asia you'll start to miss things about the US. The problem lies in how our brains tend to forget the things that made us miserable in the first place and repeating self defeating patterns

the good news is since you have access to the internet you could apply for a few esl jobs today and have a few offers tomorrow

[Yu]

Reverse culture shock coming back from Japan to the US was the worst.

Moving to China (where I am living now) has only caused mild culture shock. I was prepared for what would happen from my first 2 visits to China. The fist visit gave me 0 honeymoon phase that people usually get to expereince when moving to a foreign country. I think moving back home and expereincing the reverse culture shock is the worst.

My husband expereinced more reverse culture shock moving back to China than I did coming to China... I wonder how we will feel when we both return to the USA.