Culture Shock

culture shock [kuhl-cher shok]

–noun

1. a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment.

Culture Shock is a phenomenon consisting of four stages:

1. euphoria

2. hostility

3. regression

4. acceptance

1. Euphoria (!!!)

Everything is exciting. Everything is new. Everything feels like a holiday and an adventure. All you discover about your new country seems brighter, shinier, more efficient, exciting, sophisticated than home. From the moment you touch down in your new city after months of preparation and wonder, you are euphoric. You are finally here – your new home! Your senses are heightened to the smells, sights and sounds (more on that later). You see new possibilities all around. You sign up for Swedish classes, join new strange team sports (more on that later), and embrace all new opportunities around you.

2.Hostility

Eventually though, the shine wears off and reality sets back in, and in with reality creeps hostility. This is no longer a vacation. This is your real life now. And sometimes real life sucks. Real life involves taxes and social security numbers and bank accounts and internet connections that don’t work and mysterious laundry rooms with strange equipment in them and foreign languages with strange letters that you don’t even know how to pronounce.

Hostility begins when you realize every little thing is that much more frustrating because you are in a new country. You don’t know the language, you don’t know the customs, you have few friends here to help you manouevre through daily life. The “normal” way of doing things here, is not the “normal” way of doing things at home, like washing dishes without a sink plug, or showering without a shower curtain, or using a mangle. You resent these differences and you become easily angered by seemingly small things. And this leads to stage 3.

3. Regression

as you reject all that you once loved about the culture (taxes, socialism, cyclists) you begin to idealize everything back home (slightly lower taxes, slightly less socialist, Ford F-150s).

You withdraw from your new culture and make attempts to reconnect with your old one. You are at the height of homesickness. You seek out McDonalds like a comforting old blanket. You consider asking your family to mail you boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese, you read the newspapers of your hometown, you get cable TV just to get a sports channel that shows 3 NHL games a year. Regression can last a long time, but if you are lucky and open-minded, eventually you may reach stage 4.

4. Acceptance

Somehow, throughout these adjustments, you become settled. Maybe you accept certain aspects of this new “foreign” culture, maybe you vehemently cling to aspects of your home and native land. Maybe you assimilate, maybe you don’t. Either way, Robert Louis Stevenson put it best when he wrote:

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler that is foreign”.

Snyggt in Sweden is a blog detailing the various stages of culture shock we go through as Scott and I adapt to our life in Umeå, Sweden.