from your language into English). These are usually faster, cheaper, and more accurate than using your cell phone/mobile phone to access translations on the Internet.
Don’t fill your suitcase with sheets, towels, blankets, and pillows. Many residences will provide these, and if yours doesn’t, you can buy them cheaply at your destination.
Don’t bring lots of stationery such as notebooks, pens, and so on. Buy these at your destination.
Even though you may be excited about studying abroad, you shouldn’t underestimate the adjustment you’re going to have to make. Think of the biggest change you have had to make in your life so far—now multiply that by ten. Not only will everything around you change, you too will begin to change, and that can be confusing.
Culture shock
We often use the expression “culture shock” to describe the confusion people feel when they are trying to fit into a new culture. However, this expression can be a bit misleading because it suggests that culture shock is like a sudden, upsetting event. In fact, most people experience culture shock as a process—like the process they might go through when they have to adapt to any life-changing event, such as getting married, or having a baby.
Many people have researched and written about culture shock. Although every individual experiences culture shock in his or her own way, researchers have identified certain “stages” that people who live abroad commonly go through. Here, we’ll describe those stages, explain what happens when you “get stuck,” and suggest strategies that you can use to help yourself move on. But remember, this model of culture shock is not a description of what will happen to you—it’s a framework to help you understand your own experience of culture shock.
Stage 1: The “honeymoon”
When you arrive and begin exploring your new environment, you may find the experience very enjoyable at first. Everything may seem fascinating to you: what people eat, the way they move, the sound of their language. Even everyday objects might seem interesting to you because they are so different from what you’re used to: the streetlamps, for example, or the look and feel of a bus ticket. All these new impressions can be very exciting—you may even feel “over the moon” at times. This phase of exploration is therefore often called the “honeymoon” stage of culture shock.
Stage 2: The “let down”
For many people, the excitement of the early days wears off after a while. As you start trying to achieve what you set out to do in your new environment, the “high” is often replaced with a “low” of disappointment. Ways of doing things that seemed interesting at first now seem overly complicated and difficult. Maybe it’s the way officials speak to you that suddenly seems annoying or rude. Or maybe it’s the opening and closing hours of stores that seem so inconvenient. You can’t understand why everything has to be so difficult and why it takes so long to get anything done. You may feel frustrated, angry, or sad. You may start comparing everything in this new place with the way things are at home and find that nothing is as good as it ought to be.
Stage 3: The “adjustment”
Over time, and after several highs and lows, you’ll most likely begin to adjust to your new environment. You’ll learn how things work, and after a while all of those things that seemed so exciting and, later, so annoying, will simply be familiar to you. Everyday tasks such as shopping or getting around on public transportation will become easy. You begin to feel capable again. Your opinions become more balanced: you can see that your new home is neither perfect nor completely awful. You may begin to see the home you left behind in a different way too. Aspects of your culture that you once thought of as “the normal way of doing things” you may now see as simply things that are particular to your culture. Your mind will have opened up to new possibilities, and ideally you’ll realize you have many more choices about how to live your life than you thought you had.
Getting stuck
For most people, the process described is not a smooth or easy journey. There are many difficulties to overcome and it is easy to “get stuck” in one stage or another. Understanding how or why this may happen can help you find a way forward.
Getting stuck at Stage 1: “Going native”
Some people who move abroad never seem to move beyond the honeymoon phase: they seem enchanted with everything around them. They want to dress like a native, speak like a native, act like a native. Every detail of the new culture is important. As they try to transform themselves, they may cut ties with the people and things that remind them of home.
At first glance, this may not seem like a bad thing. Immersing yourself in the new culture in this way can be exciting. But there are also disadvantages. If you try to replace your “old self” with a “new self,” you may in the end not know quite who you are or where you belong. The place you came from may start to seem like a foreign country, but no matter how much you copy the people in your new country, you’re still a foreigner. Moreover, when it’s time to go home, you may not know which “self” to take with you.
People who tend to “go native” when abroad, sometimes lack confidence in themselves. They may feel that there are parts of themselves that do not “fit” their home culture. When they go abroad they start imitating everything about the foreign culture in order to belong.
If you think you may have this tendency, try to accept yourself as you are. Remember that the parts of you that do not seem to “fit” in are also valuable. You do not need to be the same as others in order to belong. Remember to keep in touch with people from home. Value all of the aspects of yourself that have developed through your life experiences, both at home and abroad.
Getting stuck at Stage 2: “The Complainer”
Stage 2: The “let down” is a common sticking place. Those who are stuck at Stage 2 complain all the time. Every new day seems to bring new bad experiences, and each bad experience seems to confirm the complainer’s most negative opinions of the host country and the people who live there. Complainers are miserable and hard to be with.
In order to understand why this happens, it’s important to remember that living abroad is very challenging, even if you’re normally an easy-going person. You’ll probably struggle to understand others and make yourself understood. You’ll sometimes misunderstand the “unspoken rules” of your host culture and make some embarrassing mistakes. You may have to rely on others more often than you’re used to. You may feel like a child again. All of these things can make you feel very vulnerable. For people who are used to being good at things, feeling vulnerable may feel like not being good enough. Feeling this way about yourself can be difficult. Without realizing it, you may “project” these unpleasant feelings onto others. For example, rather than simply accepting your own feelings of confusion, you might blame your host country for being “disorganized” and “confusing.”
