Choque cultural
When we think about traveling, we don’t usually think about the “side effects” that it might have. Now, I’m going to talk about one of them that is called “culture shock” and try to connect with the experience I had abroad. Culture shock Is a subject that’s been studied for many psychologists and can be defined as a feeling of uncertainty, confusion or anxiety that people experience when they live In or visit a different culture. In the studies they classified that In five stages.
The first stage Is known as “honeymoon” In this period of time Is when you first arrive abroad and everything Is new excellent and kind of strange, you want to see the different social norms, try the weird new food and get Into the modes of conversation of the new culture, In this period you might even suffer from the time difference and you body can feel it, but you are excited the discover what that new place has to offer to you. This stage can last for a long while, because it might seem as an adventure.
However, the second stage can be a little bit harder, because in this stage is the erred that you kind of settled down into that new world, it’s the time you can have problems because of the language barrier or with the rules of the house, if you live in a homesteads then you also start realizing certain things when you start having your tasks, such as working and studying; if you live by yourself you have to do all the housework, like cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, doing groceries.. TCL, In the same stage, you start missing your family friends and things from your house, it might happen even more if you are not welcome in the place you are staying.
Something that shouldn’t be a problem for you if you were in your homeland, now that you are abroad, it is going to be a problem, and because of this you may develop unhealthy habits (like smoking/ drinking too much, or being so concerned over food or contact with people from that culture) sometimes when it’s really hard to the people deal with this shock, they may even get sick or have healthy problems, and it may make them want to go back to their own culture or even spend their time with people from their own culture .
This is known as the rejection stage. The third stage Is called the adjustment stage. It happens when you start realizing that all those bad things that happened before were not so bad. In this stage you realize that you “grew up”, you start feeling stronger, you basically can take care of yourself without “much help” you fell really Independent. The fourth stage Is called “at ease at last” In this stage, you feel as If you are home, feeling comfortable, you can face strongly with the problems you might have and you will know how to deal and solve them.
In this stage you are able to even give advice to people from your country that has Just arrived abroad. The fifth and last stage of culture shock, Is not really known, It Is called reverse culture shock, which for me was the hardest! You suffer of that when you go back to you own culture, and realize that you have changed and the things there as well. You feel a fish out of the water. All the simple things that were k before you left, now are a problem or you have difficult to adapt yourself again.
