Culture Shock

There are 4 stages to culture shock.

Excitement

Withdrawal

Adjustment

Enthusiasm

And it takes time to traverse the span of emotions associated with each.

Excitement- September – February

Honemoon

I passed easily and painlessly through this phase with flying colors. I loved the Spanish all around me, and the market on Saturday mornings and the bus (on time or late or moved around the corner from where it was yesterday.) I loved the beach a few hours away. I was moving around constantly, and spending a month doing my TEFL course, and going home for Christmas and coming back and getting an apartment and starting new jobs.  It was fun.

Withdrawal- February-End of April

This was the part where I found myself crying behind my huge sunglasses at the bus stop, and packing my bags in the middle of the night, and leaving class to pull myself together in the bathroom, and being generally racist for lack of a better word. I fantasized about buying plane tickets and went to Walmart just to feel at home. This was not the most rational point in my life.

Adjustment- End of April to Present

I would argue that I’m not completely out of withdrawal. I still can’t say that I have completely embraced this new world, but I don’t hate it nearly as passionately as before either. Some little bastards actually threw water on me out a car window the other day and I didn’t even shed a tear. I just flipped them off and kept walking. About 30 minutes later I even laughed about it.  If that had happened a month ago I probably would have just sat right down on the side of the road and thrown a full blown pity party. Progress.

Enthusiasm-

This part is supposed to come after about a year when you have really established a life and made a place for yourself in your new environment.

Yeah.

I think one of my bosses said it best: “Why spend your whole life working so you can retire in 

paradise, when you could just spend your life working in paradise?”

By the end of June I will be completely out of withdrawal I think, and will have started adjusting and relearning to love everything again. Good. I won’t be leaving on a sour note. I won’t be staying though to experience the enthusiasm phase. Why spend my life working and waiting to fall in love with this place, when I could just leave here now with some priceless life experiences and get back to the paradise where my heart already is?