Reverse Culture Shock

When you move to another country, there are certain things you expect to happen. You expect things to NOT be "normal" anymore. You expect everything to be different...and you do what you can to adjust to those differences. But when you come back to the country you're from, you expect everything to be "normal" again. But you soon find that the things that were once "normal"...well...aren't.

When I first moved to Czech, my mentor gave me some advice on learning the language. She told me, “Never tune the language out. Even if you don’t understand keep listening, don’t tune it out.” I didn’t realize how much I did that, until I got back to the states.

I went to the store with my friend when I first got to the states. She and I were walking and talking, and I finally had to stop her for a second and tell her that I didn’t hear a word she had just said. I got so used to not tuning things out, that I couldn’t tune anyone in the store out. Not to mention the fact that over there, whenever I hear English, I automatically assume people are talking to me. So when I was at the store, I heard every word of every conversation around me, just not the conversation I was having. I was on auditory overload. I heard everything, but couldn’t understand anything. While I’m in the states, I have to re-train myself to tune out background noise so I can understand what’s going on around me.

I never understood that living in the states could seem so different to me. I’m just figuring out what it’s like to live in the states again.