Culture Shock

Today, I had another look at the first progress test, in order to get some kind of idea what today's questions will be like, or maybe Charmed-like, a vision of the future...

But nothing happend, bad luck Birgit!

But at least I thought about the Culture Shock topic again, remembered an article I once read and here you are, the five stages of Culture Shock!

The first stage is called Honeymoon. You arrive in a new country, everything is new and you are very excited about everything.

Soon after that stage of enthusiasm follows stage two: Rejection. You get used to things and realize that you will have to live and work in this place from now on. You recognize many differences to your home country and they really start annoying you. Troubles add up and you develop hostility towards your host country.

This leads to the third step called Regression: You start to withdraw, start to avoid the local people, and as a consequence, they’ll start avoiding you as well.

After that, things start to get easier again, in a stage called Acceptance: You realise that no way of living is better or worse, but that they are just different, and you start to develop affection for your new home.

Subsequently, you enter the stage of Re-entry. You realise that you have to go home again. And returning isn’t easy either because things change, there is also some kind of re-entry shock.

In the end, the author concludes that you can’t prevent culture-shock from happening, but that you can shorten the process by realizing that you neither have to reject your own, nor the new culture.