Absorbing the Shock

Anyone who’s traveled internationally has experienced it. Feeling like you’re the only one that speaks your language wears your clothes or looks like you. Since my journey here spans across months, there are a few different stages I am prepared to handle. Scarcely into my first week of Barcelona life and I’m already able to arrange my thoughts as some form of culture shock or other and brace for what’s ahead.

Culture shock strikes people in many different ways and forms but there are four distinctive phases we all go through. The first stage, wonderlust, begins the moment you breathe in the air of your new country. Much like children with new toys, you want to spend every moment exploring every crevice and function of the place you are to call “home.” Throw in a heavy dose of jet lag and this makes for very exhausting first week, trust me. Guadi, tapas and Gothic churches had me salivating to see more of this amazing place called Spain. I was intrigued by the curious lisp of the Spanish and linguistic enchantment of Catalan, Barcelona’s official language and couldn’t blink an eye.

After exchanging my dollars for depressing amounts of Euros and using my garbled Español to make my way around town I foresaw another stage of culture shock looming on the horizon- frustration. Here’s the toughest part about being abroad I tell you. You begin to compare things as they were back home, which can make you depressed or even angry and leave you tallying the days until your return flight. It can be aggravating to get used to a culture that lives with nearly zero personal space. Everyday is an adjustment from hearing your neighbor’s toilet flush, to smelling their paella cooking and watching their underwear flop around on the clothesline – for some it can be a daunting process.

In time, or with a changing of worldviews, you can gradually accept this as your way of life. In the few month’s I’m abroad I know I will never refer to myself as a Spaniard, but I know that my accent will change, my eating and sleeping habits will accommodate the nocturnal Spanish life, passive European-paced lifestyle and scrumptious Mediterranean cooking.

I love it such that in the final stage of culture shock, returning home probably will come by surprise. In the absence of all I’ve come to accept as real-life I’ll suddenly back in the American rat-race of fast-food, diesel trucks and Wal-Marts, most of which probably won’t fill the absence of the love affair I’m forming with this country.

In the end, I know that to experience everything a culture has to offer one must learn to leave their cultural baggage at home. One must realize that just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s not normal; it’s just not normal for you. There’s no magic prescription to cure culture shock, but like any adventure it must be lived and appreciated for everything it brings, the laughs, the jeers and ultimately, new pathways of thought.

- Published in Texas State University Star 9/17/08