How to prepare for reverse culture shock

by Gadling Staff on

You’re planning your return from an extended vacation. Or, you’re coming back to live in an old, familiar place after a long stint working abroad. Either way, you’ll need to prepare mentally for your return home.

Although you may have grown up in this old familiar place, returning home can be a real jolt to the system. After all, you’ve grown accustomed to the lifestyle, attitudes, and perspective of some new culture. Now, this new culture is in your blood; you’re a new person now. Remember how different the new culture felt when you first arrived — the “culture shock” you experienced? Believe it or not, returning to your old stomping grounds can be just as rattling. This is known as “reverse culture shock.”

For weeks — maybe months! — you’ll be experiencing your home base with fresh perspective; seeing old friends who may not understand what you’ve seen and done; and navigating a (potentially) unfamiliar culture of consumerism. It can be stressful. Here are some tips for making the adjustment and learning to love your new, old home again.

Don’t expect your friends and family to want all the delicious details of your trip.
More often than not, they’ll ask, “Did you have a good time?” or “Was it what you’d hoped it would be?”. They’ll smile and nod and be happy to hear you reply, “Yes!” And … that’s it. No more.

So don’t plan the two-hour slide show, and make peace with the fact that even your closest friends and family may just not care about the time you found yourself on horseback roping cattle with Mexican cowboys or schmoozing on the Jungfrau ski slopes with Swiss business clients. You may have had a life-changing experience abroad, but back home, people were living their lives and enduring the same ol’ same ol’ you got to escape. So don’t rub it in. (To be fair, it may not be that they don’t care. It may be that, at home in their normal lives, they just can’t understand the massive, life-changing experience you enjoyed.)

Find some friends who can share your new, wider world perspective.
Seek out expats living in your area, or reach out to others who have also spent significant time in other cultures. There’s a good chance those folks will want to hear your stories — and they might even agree to look at your photos.

Get on Facebook.
Find your friends from abroad. Seeing photos and daily updates of friends you’ve left behind will help you feel connected to the life you left behind.

Get off Facebook.
However, resist the urge to simply hang on the Internet. Make plans that involve face-to-face contact, actual food, and real experiences. The best way to re-kindle the flame for the culture you left behind is to embrace it. Give it a hug. So make a dinner reservation, buy a movie ticket, and leave the house.

Make shopping lists.
Rediscovering a developed nation’s shopping experience can leave a person breathless. Nowhere in the world are there as many choices, stores, and products. After buying at local boutiques, green grocers, butchers, and bakeries, a developed nation’s mega-retailer or grocery store may feel overwhelming. The Halloween costumes for cats may be captivating, but you’ll never get out of there if you don’t stay focused and buy what you came for.


Keep up your language skills.
Get the foreign language channels on your cable service and watch Sponge Bob in Spanish. Don’t select English when you watch your DVDs. Call friends, speak to shopkeepers, read foreign magazines. Unless you make the effort to use your language skills, you’ll lose them. And down the road, you’ll feel really bad about that.

Incorporate foreign customs into your lifestyle.
Since most Western holidays have become consumer-driven events, many holiday traditions of foreign cultures can feel like a breath of fresh air.

Instead of spending an arm and a leg on artificial amputated arms and legs for Halloween, why not create a “Day of the Dead Altar” with fruits and flowers, and photos of relatives who’ve passed on? Alternatively, make a Dragon head costume and have dim sum for New Year’s Eve.

Get involved with a cause.
Westerners can be among the most generous and proactive members of the social and environmental activism movements. There’s no better way to feel good about your country than to be a part of an effort that makes the world a better place — for animals or for human beings, even for rivers, mountains, and forests.

Make plans to visit the country you left behind.
Investigate house swap websites or invite friends to trade your apartment or house so you can more easily afford to travel. If you know you have plans for a visit, coming back home may not feel so final.

Be careful what you eat.
In the Western world, high fructose corn syrup is in soft drinks, spaghetti sauces, and even sandwich breads. It’s easy to gain a few pounds after being away for so long, unless you check labels and look for hidden calories. And, while your first stop after the airport may be McDonald’s to eat some french fries, you don’t really need to “super size it.”

If you’ve learned anything by living in a foreign country, its that you can get by eating and buying and having less. Remember how happy you were with less. Less is more.

Returning home after a long experience abroad can be jarring initially. However, with a little patience, you’ll feel comfortable in your new, old home again — and richer for having explored other cultures.

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State Department website lists where American travelers have died abroad

by Katie Hammel on

The LA Times recently linked to a tool on the US State Department website that allows you to search by date range and country to find out where around the world Americans have died of “non-natural” causes.

The information goes back to 2002. No names or details of the deaths are disclosed, they are only reported as suicide, drowning, drug-related, homicide, disaster, or vehicle, air or maritime accident, and listed according to date. The disclaimer on the site states that the stats may not be entirely accurate however, as they only represent those deaths disclosed to the State Department.

So can this tool tell you where you should or shouldn’t go based on your likelihood of drowning, getting into an accident, or being killed as a tourist there? Not really. Circumstances of the deaths are, of course, not disclosed and there is no distinction between expats or people who have lived in the country for many years and those who are tourists visiting on vacation.

Even countries with high numbers of deaths shouldn’t automatically be crossed off your list. Mexico, for example, lists 126 American deaths in 2009. 36 of those were homicides. Sounds like a big number, but not as big compared to the 2.6 million Americans who fly to Mexico every year. As the LA Times points out, “the odds overwhelmingly suggest that your vacation will be nonfatal.”

Can you go home again? A question for the long term traveler

by Jamie Rhein on

There’s the adage “you can’t go home again” that does bear merit, particularly if one has been gone from home for years. Perhaps you traveled back to your hometown for Thanksgiving and have a mental checklist for just how much the town has changed.

Certainly you noticed changes in yourself. Or maybe you noticed that even though you’ve changed, your trip back home was an indication that some things never change–family dynamics, perhaps? But let’s not go there. In the case of this post, let’s expand home past a person’s hometown to a person’s country.

I’ve moved out of the United States four different times for a variety of time periods. The first was on a study abroad program to Denmark for four months. The last was for four years that were split between Taiwan and India. Each time I was gone, I needed to readjust to life back in the United States. As I discovered, readjusting to ones own country can be more difficult than getting used to living in another one. Even after a short period of time of traveling, we change. Once you’ve made another country home for awhile, there is a disconnect between how you’ve changed and what your expectations are for life back home.

This disconnect is wonderfully highlighted in “Some Indians Find it Tough to Go Home Again” in the New York Times. The article looks at what happens to Indians who grew up in the U.S. and moved back to India several years later with the notion of helping out their home country. In general, what people find out is that who they have become and how they do business does not match up with India’s culture. What they expect is not at all what they get.

Interestingly, as the article points out, expats who are not from India often have an easier time fitting into Indian business culture because they are able to adjust to the Indian system more easily.

This phenomenon is not only common to India, I would guess–or to people who have lived in the United States. I have friends who have lived overseas for years who I can’t see living in the U.S. again because they have become absorbed by the cadence of living elsewhere. The U.S. would not be a great fit.

National Geographic Glimpse program accepting applications

by Katie Hammel on

If you are between the ages of 18 and 34 and will be living abroad for at least ten weeks between January and July of 2010, the National Geographic Glimpse program wants to hear from you.

Glimpse correspondents will take photos and write stories about their experiences abroad, receive training and support from professional editors, get a $600 stipend, and have the possibility of being featured in National Geographic Magazine.

Candidates do not have to be US citizens, but they must have access to the internet while abroad and commit to working with the program editors on their submissions, which will include photos, stories about the place they are living, the people they meet, and the experiences they share. Applicants need to submit two references and a writing sample, plus an $18 fee for consideration.

Applications are due November 8, and finalists will be announced December 15, 2009. If your time abroad doesn’t coincide with the spring schedule, you can apply for the fall program (August to December) starting in April, 2010.

Expats hit hard by economic downturn

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s a popular dream–move to a sunny, beautiful part of the world where life is cheap and say goodbye to the home country forever.

But the BBC has found that the dream of many expats has soured because of the economic downturn. The article focuses on the tens of thousands of British expats living in Spain, but the story could be about expats anywhere. For the past twenty years the English have been moving to Spain in droves, especially the sun-soaked coastline of Costa del Sol and Mallorca (pictured here). They fueled a real estate boom that was one of the major factors of Spanish economic growth until the housing bubble popped, markets crashed, and Spain ended up with a 17% unemployment rate. Oh, and the change from the peseta to the euro caused inflation that ended the “cheap living” part forever.

Now some expats are headed home. Many had jobs related to the housing industry that have since disappeared, and new jobs are not forthcoming. English-teaching jobs may be next as Spaniards rein in discretionary expenditures.

Are you an expat? Has your job or lifestyle been affected by the economic downturn? Gadling readers want to know.