I just finished reading one of my assigned books for this study. It was full of stories from mission personnel and how they experienced reverse culture shock. Some of the stories were very positive and others were marked with great challenges. One of the chapters was about small silly things that occur that completely overwhelm us. There were, of course, grocery store stories, struggling with technology stories, and slang stories. I thought it would be fun to share some of my own silly and overwhelming moments and invite you to share some of your own either in the comment section or via e-mail. :) Your stories and experiences will help to shape my project greatly! So here's some of mine:
-My first meal: My parents, brother and I went to the Great American Pub for my first meal stateside. (The name seems pretty appropriate, right?) We had just driven about an hour from the airport, so they all had to go to the bathroom. As soon as we got to the table, they all left to go and I sat down. I opened the menu and instantly felt the most overwhelmed! Everything was in English! I could read every word! I could not even decide if I was hungry let alone what I wanted to eat. By the time my family got back to the table I was crying. I think my mom ended up ordering me a chicken tortilla salad, with extra ranch.
- Getting a cellphone: One of the first errands that I ran with my parents was to go to the Verizon store to get me a new cellphone. My old one was lost over the course of the year, so I needed a new one. We went and again I was totally overwhelmed. I had no idea what a smart phone was or what a droid was and all they could do. I kept asking my dad what he thought, but he just wanted me to be happy and pick what I wanted. I ended up with a droid, mostly because that is what the salesman was pushing. Several days later, I figured out how it worked, what it was, and was really shocked that I had something so cool and up to date.
-Orientation Fair Hell: One of the event during the first week of seminary was an orientation fair in the largest meeting room on campus. It has pretty horrible acoustics and was filled with first year students and tables for every office, club, and service on campus. There were dozens of conversations going on around me and I could not take it all in. For a whole year I was used to blocking out the Polish chatter that was around me. If someone was speaking English, I knew it was for my ears. I could not process all of the conversations that seemed to be demanded my attention. I had to leave the room three times for the relative silence of the bathroom. In the end, I skipped the last five tables that I was supposed to visit because I just couldn't cut it.
Did you experience any such overwhelming yet silly moments upon your reentry?
english is pretty widely spoken where i did a study abroad (in nairobi). as a result, many of the miscommunications i experienced were super frustrating because i assumed that we were speaking the same language when, really, there are a lot of variations between u.s. english and kenyan english. for example, when i asked my roommate where was the electrical outlet and she assumed 'outlet' meant store and did not use it as a synonym for 'socket'. or when i came home to the states using slang and grammar constructions that no one understood. i stopped using most of them, but i decided to keep some idiosyncrasies in my speech. my experience abroad is a part of who i am today, and that is one way i allowed it to change me.
ReplyDelete(After living in Palestine for a year with YAGM) I remember eating brunch with my family in a local restaurant and I was convinced that I should know everyone in the restaurant, simply because they appeared to be Caucasian and were speaking English.
ReplyDeleteHere's the rest of the list that I posted on my blog right after returning to the US:
I can read street signs? And menus? And ingredient labels?? CRAZY!
Cars go slower here and honk waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less.
American tomatoes? Disappointing.
I am really friendly with people at stores, because I'm used to saying thank you. My mom thinks I'm just practicing my English.
It's cold here. Really cold. I sleep in a hoodie and sweatpants.
I'm pleased that I can leave my house in shorts and a tye-dye t-shirt, or sweatpants.
Those were the easier things to recognize in re-entry, but I found the harder things happened a few months later, when I thought I had resettled into life as an American in America. I found myself in my old groups of friends feeling completely alone and foreign in conversations. People didn't understand what I had been through and to be fair, I didn't understand what they had been through in the last year. My head was spinning with ways to articulate oppression and the Occupation, when my friends from pre-YAGM were complaining about the same things as before. This certainly had its ups and downs.
And, I echo "E" in saying that I have kept some of the little things from my time in Palestine, because it is a huge part of who I am today.
Thanks for sharing these glimpses of your stories! :)
ReplyDeleteI've only been home for three weeks so I'm still very much "in transition." One thing I've noticed is how much I want to be using British English and I get mildly annoyed when someone mentions that it's amusing to hear! I've used the term "summer holidays" several times because I just like it better than "vacation," but I've had to force myself to ask "where is the bathroom" because to most Americans it sounds cleaner and more polite than "where is the toilet" :-)
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