Repatriation, day 3

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People know to expect culture shock when they move abroad. They're generally less prepared to experience it when they move back home, because home is home, right? Only when you experience something that changes you, like living abroad (or going to college) then you can't just come back home and expect everything to be the same as it was

Comments

[roseandsigil]

"I'm totally out of touch with American fashion. WHY are the 80s back?"

It is true! It is a mystery!

[aleffert]

Because you missed the year when it was the seventies.

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No, I think that was the year that H&M opened in Doha, and I bought like every dress in sight. :-D

But maybe that was the year it was like 1968, I'm not sure. There was an awful lot of psychedelic paisley involved.

[mdrnprometheus]

Me, I appreciated the clean and the endless amounts of personal space. Probably rather different from Doha vs India.

[qatar]

I remember felt that way when returning to Doha from India. :-)

[kit_ping]

Here's a random question: Are you going to keep the livejournal name, now that you're back?

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I certainly need a new username overall, but I haven't come up with one yet.

I may just abandon this LJ with this name and start a new one for non-Qatar stuff, though... haven't decided.

[anonymous]

I still don't understand this "honeymoon stage" nonsense. Isn't that just a clever way of saying, "I appreciate various good aspects of returning to America.", and isn't that a non-clever way of saying something totally obvious?

On the flip side, it would definitely be remarkable if you /didn't/ find anything good about returning to America ... why don't we only bother talking about the "missing honeymoon stage" of culture shock? This is my proposal.

YT

[qatar]

I don't think it's just a clever/nonclever way of saying either of those. I think the point of describing a honeymoon stage of culture shock is that people frequently go through a period of ZOMG THIS IS ALL AMAZING, followed by a period of ZOMG THIS IS ALL AWFUL. So it's not just a way of saying that I find things to appreciate; it's a way of saying that I'm at the point where the good things all jump out at me, but I haven't yet had to deal with any of the bad things.

Not sure what you mean about the missing honemoon stage?

[anonymous]

So ... we're told we all go through culture shock, but I've never, ever, thought "ZOMG THIS IS ALL AMAZING" or "ZOMG THIS ALL SUX0R" upon going or returning home. So either your definition of the Honeymoon Stage is wrong, or else lots of us don't go through culture shock. What do you think?

As for my proposal, it's simple. I took "Honeymoon Stage" to mean a period of time where you're relatively frequently noticing many good things (and not what you wrote above). And since that really does happen to nearly everyone, and tells us nothing about anything, it's incredibly boring. But if people were to return home and discover /nothing good about it/, that "Missing Honeymoon Stage" would be interesting.

-YT

[qatar]

Well, I think your ZOMG THIS IS ALL AMAZING is a straw man, but sure, not everyone goes through culture shock every time they move.

I see what you mean about missing honeymoon stage now. I think that was sorta what I was getting at. I've had lots of friends come back to the US expecting things to be dreamy and then it takes them by surprise when they're irritated by things. So I guess I threw the honeymoon stage thing in there at the end to say that I intended to follow up the post with another one about the downsides of coming home. So far, though, I'm still too damn happy. :-) My only complaints so far are that the bookstores close too early (9! It's not even dark out at 9!) and that my best friend is now in a really inconvenient time zone. ;-)