I love culture shock. I thrive on the disorientation of arriving to a new and unknown destination and the challenge of getting to know it. That’s why I came to Spain. For the first time in my life, however, I’ve had the chance to move past culture shock in a foreign country. And I don’t know quite know what to make of it.
The State Department defines culture shock as an “adjustment period” in which someone adapts to a new culture. In a set of guidelines that alternate between speaking to exchange students and to their parents, the State Department outlines three phases of culture shock: “Honeymoon,” “Rejection,” and “Recovery.” To adjust to a new culture, students and foreigners in general will adapt to a country first by loving it, then hating it, and then accepting the good and the bad as part of everyday life.
I moved through these phases relatively quickly at the beginning of the semester, enjoying the foreign-ness of everything and then fairly quickly rejecting the slow pace of business and the difficulty of using a foreign language. Previous experiences abroad, and similar reactions to my new environment, reminded me not to panic and to ride out the emotional ups-and-downs. But here I am; I have spent two months living in a foreign land and have almost two more in front of me, and the only thing that surprises me is how familiar it all seems.
I love the disorientation I get when I travel to a new place, but Spain is no longer new. As I sit at the desk in the bedroom of a house occupied by a Spanish family, that two months ago I had never met, I struggle to find something that disorients me. The language doesn’t disorient me; not even the slang does. Lectures and fast-talking professors can’t disorient me, nor can the lack of regular assignments. The eating times don’t disorient me. Not even the goofy cars make me do a double take anymore.
This summer, I couldn’t wait to get to learn about Spain and immerse myself in a new country, but I gave no thought to what would happen after that. I’m no expert on Spain, but now, Spain is predictable. And that predictability, unlike anything else in the past couple weeks, has definitely caught me off guard.
A Spanish friend of mine joked to me that the exchange students get to know Spain better than the locals, because they want to experience everything they can in the country before they leave. And while I have definitely visited more places in Spain than some of my Spanish friends here, I don’t agree that I have gotten to know Spain better than the locals. Perhaps I’m more familiar with it. Superficially, I’ve gotten to know the country well. But on a deeper level, I am certainly still “foreign.” I’ve familiarized myself, but I haven’t assimilated myself—I don’t think I ever will.
Right now, I am in a weird liminal space between foreign and native, tourist and local. I know the city like I do my home; I commute as if it were my home. And every day after class, I “come home” and do homework (or not). Superficially, it’s home now, but it’s not “home” as I had previously understood it.
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