culture shock
I’ve been completely remiss in posting, not even because I’ve been busy, but because I think I’ve been having culture shock. Yes, even though I’ve been here for many months now.
I guess some people think that culture shock refers to the initial “differentness” you notice in everything when you move somewhere else, but it’s actually, as I understand it at least, something that doesn’t come until later. After weeks or months of trying to find your footing, learning how things work, getting better at the language, thinking you’re doing well… you get to a point where everything just frustrates you. Not fully understanding anything, and never being fully understood yourself the way you are in your native language, your native culture. It can start to seem kind of overwhelming, the amount of things that will probably never make sense to you about this new place and the people that live there.
I think it started last week, when one of my roommates broke up with her boyfriend. I came in in the middle of a conversation, I guess without context I could understand the words of what they were saying, but I didn’t quite piece together what had happened. I only figured it out little by little when she was in bed all day, and then moving all her clothes and things back from his apartment. (3 days later they got back together and everything is back to normal now.) And it’s the kind of situation where there isn’t really a delicate way to ask what happened after the fact, after they thought I already knew, or at least there wasn’t a way that I could think of. And I can’t remember what I said, before I understood, but I’m sure I obtusely asked how she was, in a chipper tone, or something like that. Totally incompetent, but probably seeming totally uncaring. Even though it’s a situation easily resolved, all these things can make you feel completely lost at sea.
And now? I hope things are getting better. We’ll see.
