I always thought that culture shock was something you experienced when you left your home country. It happened when you went to a foreign place and experienced a new culture; I never thought that you could experience it coming back to your own country and trying to get settled back into the familiarity of your own home.
Coming back from Thailand, and reengaging in a culture that I have grown up in, has been harder than expected.
It doesn't feel as familiar as it should.
Being able to see your own culture from a different perspective is endlessly important. Living immersed in a new culture allows you to be critical of your own. It gives you the opportunity to detach from it enough to analyze it, to appreciate all that it is, and to recognize its flaws. And coming back to your home country after that makes it harder to engage and leaves you feeling more detached than you thought you would.
Before you go abroad, people warn you that it might be hard to be reintroduced to your old lifestyle; there are even seminars offered to cope with reverse culture shock. But I didn't understand how relevant it would be until I was back.
For me, I found that spending time with family was endlessly helpful. Sometimes friends and relationships you had before you left will feel more strained upon returning home. Just like you grow out of old habits, sometimes you grow out of old friends, too. It isn't anything either party did, it is just a part of growing up. If you feel like you don't relate to certain people anymore, that is OK. Appreciate the relationship you had instead of dwelling on the reality of change.
Witnessing firsthand what it means to live in a developing country will obliterate your perception of what it means to struggle -- that is vital to becoming more self-aware and compassionate. Allow that to redefine how you view things. After coming back, it will be hard to figure out how to make sense of your newly changed perspective, but I think that it is incredibly important to continue making changes to your lifestyle even after you're not abroad anymore. Focus on being a contributing member of society and make great effort to help others in any way that you can.
Living immersed in another culture changes you, and those changes don't cease to exist just because you go back home -- embrace the idea that it might me harder to process all that you've learned once you've returned, but the lessons you learn while away will be invaluable to your life and the way you decide to live it.
As students set to embark on their adventures abroad this next semester, I hope that they embrace their travels fully. Soak up all of the new experiences -- good or bad.
But when the time comes to board the plane and return home, understand it might be harder than you thought, and that is OK. Getting the hang of being back in the states takes time, but it isn't a transition that is unbearable.
You might think differently about the place you grew up in, but whatever hardships come along with returning home, the adventure of traveling is worth it.
