On second thoughts...
have just been thinking again through what i wrote last night when i was slightly drunk (last night i mean, not now - it's only lunchtime...)
I asked myself, would it really be so 'easy' to adjust back to any European city, having spent a year in Bangkok? How quickly does one's own culture begin to become 'foreign'?
I know that Caro, for example, found it quite tough getting back to Switzerland, even after 4 months travelling in Asia.
Laura, Cileia, Dhruvli, would be glad to hear your thoughts...
I asked myself, would it really be so 'easy' to adjust back to any European city, having spent a year in Bangkok? How quickly does one's own culture begin to become 'foreign'?
I know that Caro, for example, found it quite tough getting back to Switzerland, even after 4 months travelling in Asia.
Laura, Cileia, Dhruvli, would be glad to hear your thoughts...
posted by Rob at
1:45 PM
5 Comments:
hmmm rob. sorry to dissapoint but ive had no reverse culture shock since my return to india. strange as it seems.
blame it on the international team we had, blame it on a very diverse and fast paced routine back in switzerland that challenged the norm and 'routine' that one gets into.
the point for me however is this, ive brought a lot of tangible expectations with me from positive learnings of a western european culture which i want to continue to exhibit and use as a tool for impact on people around me. we spoke of some of these if you remember.
secondly, one of the key things i did to keep in touch with my culture was a continuous update of activities back home (news, maintaining contact with friends across generations and professional careers). this once again has helped the acclimitization process as i feel quite updated with the events of delhi and the rest of the country.
finally, a useful exercise is to make notes of what you believe is your own 'culture' and 'cultural expectation'. striking off the similarities and noting the dissimilarities serve as useful notes for future reflections....
have a blast dude...:)
Hey Rob
I hope you wont mind my replying to your post.
Those who designed the flow of the exchange process putting in "re-integration" knew what they were talking about. I will illustrate with my experience
I come from Nigeria which must have one of the most laid back cultures in the world. Its totally ok to be half an hour late for an appointment. You ALMOST always have an excuse for it.
I have worked in Sweden for the last year which is the epitome of the "structure and organization" we always joke about in WENA. As the saying goes, 'If you are 5 minutes late for an appointment in Sweden, pretend to be out of breath and come up with a really good excuse!'
I didnt realize how much i have been affected by this culture until i sent an urgent email to Nigeria the other day and didnt get a reply on time! When they finally replied, it wasnt strange to them to have delayed replying for almost 72 hours! I was getting so pissed until i remembered i was probably guilty of this a few times as an MC member in Nigeria!
So now when i go back home, i will have to adjust to that 'laid-back' culture all over again. One of two things will happen, i will either heave a long mental sigh of relief that i dont have to plan my schedule to the last minute...OR I will have a mental breakdown when people dont keep to schedules and are always late.
Typical Europeans who come to Nigeria are either always fustrated or learn to give a buffer time in their dealings with people.
Hope this helped!
Well, I actually did have a pretty bad culture shock when I got back from the states 3 years ago.
I guess when you're in an other culture, you always have those little nice things that you get adjusted to without even noticing and suddenly, you come back and find yourself missing exactly that or noticing the lack of it, even though it never bothered you before. (As ladi said with beeing late).
But for me, that was not the real problem. My culture shock was more fundamental and a product of a naive mindset during my exchange year:
Over the year in which I was away I stared to remember only the positiv things and forgot the ennoying stuff about switzerland and the wallis. Which is natural and good but also dangerous.
I did have times in which I was very badly homesick. At that time I often looked at the things I didn't like in the american culture and compared them to "all those good things we have in Switzerland". That over time led me to idealize Switzerland and to be looking forward to come back and find some sort of utopia.
That was one of my big mistakes during that year. I was 16 then and I beliefe or hope that I'd see things in a much different way now. Less comparing, but more taking it as it is.
Of course I ended up coming home and discovering all those things I never liked about this county and that I totally forgot about in that process.
That didn't happen in the first weeks. It was more like an ongoing process in the month to come that made me pretty disapointed.
But hey! Don't worry! I believe reverse culture shock is a question of flexiblity of your mind. That is something one can work on. And if you focus on the positive rather than on the negativ aspects of everything, you'll be fine!
x
Really interesting point Rob. Post it on a global community and we get a wonderful discussion ;-)
And believe me I thought about it when I wrote my last update on my blog. Because I already got used to people being late here and I got frustrated that the rule, for every minute late you pay 10cents up to a maximum of 30min = 3$ doesn't have an effect at all.
So what do you do?
In my eyes you have two options: 1) get upset, 2) do the best out of it and work something for you (your little computer (=memory stick) is always with me or go for a coffee
And I guess when I always follow my motto (it's nr. 2 by the way) I won't have problems here nor once I'm back...
that's what I believe now.
can tell you more about it in one year...
Hey Rob, really really interesting point, that I have thought a lot about when I came back from Namibia. It was only for three moths, but in these three months I did it the way you did it when you came to Switzerland: I always thought about the negative points of the Swiss culture, and this made it quite hard for me to come back. Example: When someone told me a "problem" like: Oh my God, I don't know what to cook tonight, or oh my God, my mother told me that I am not allowed to go out tonight, I thought: Hey, what's going on here? Why are these people so unhappy and only looking for problems? In Namibia, a lot of people don't even have something to eat and other people have lost their mother years ago because of HIV/AIDS, and they are happier than we are.
This was the main point that I still have problems with today: This dissatisfaction we have here in Switzerland, even though we have everything!
I think it really depends on the way you look at your culture when you are away, if you will have a "reverse culture shock".
And about what Gio is saying: Getting used to cultures really quickly I totally agree: I dont know if this is an AIESEC phenomenon, but I can adapt to a totally different cutlure really quickly, and when I come back home, it of course takes me some time, but can adapt then as well. I mean, we just have to. But I always try not to forget what I have learned and try to reflect a lot about my experiences (when I feel dissatisfaction I remember Namibia and my XP there...and then I feel much better). Would love to talk to you about that when you are back in Switzerland! A beer or two?
Sue
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