Reverse Culture Tremors

I am currently at home in California for the holidays, and there is nothing better than spending Christmas with the family (especially if you get to go to Disneyland).


Disneyland Christmas lights and Sleeping Beauty's castle.
I thought coming back home would be an especially smooth transition seeing how I came home for a visit last summer, but nevertheless I forgot how we do things in California.

While the term shock seems a bit extreme, since I remembered almost immediately, "oh yeah things are different back home," they did take me by surprise. For this lighter, easier transition back to Americanness, the word tremor feels more fitting than shock.

Here is a list of my reverse culture tremor experiences:

1. Strangers are nice and ask you about your life.
My first interaction on American soil was with the border control police officer, and after asking me the required questions, he started to ask me how I liked going to school abroad, if it was very different from American schools, and if my classes were in French. A stranger hadn't asked me about my life since I'd been back in France.

2. Servers are way too friendly and involved in your eating experience.
Along the same lines, I went out to lunch with my parents and our server was just way to nice to us. Plus, the manager even came out and made sure we were having a good dining experience. It was a bit much, but very typical.

3. Tax is not included in the list price.
While at Disneyland, I wanted to buy their famous dill pickle. The list price was $2.99. I got out my five dollar bill and was expecting two dollars and a penny back. Imagine my surprise when suddenly the cost was $3.23! I had forgot tax is added after the fact in my homeland.

4. Things change.
Going back home, despite knowing better, I always think things are going to be just as they were before I left. This is of course not the case, and I was pretty surprised to learn that one of the local radio stations has changed names. Luckily, one thing always stays the same; my great family is always happy to have me home.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Hopefully cultural tremor free.

Choc Culturel Inverser

My first moment of reverse culture shock came rather quickly. It happened the same day I arrived in California. After the hour and a half long drive home from LAX, I really had to pee. I groggily went to my bathroom, and took care of business. It was after that the culture shock occurred.

I went to flush the toilet, and something was wrong. There was nothing on the top for me to pull or push. “How do I….” I began to think, when I almost immediately remembered that in America, the flush is on the side of the toilet.

Most of the big differences I was mentally prepared for. I knew I would be carded again and that the cars are bigger here. It was the smaller stuff that crept up on me unexpectedly; the weight of a coke can; how awkward it felt ending a text conversation without “bisous.”

I think what made it so weird is that most things were still the same at home. I would often quickly remember, “oh right, that’s how we do things here.” It wasn’t my home that had changed. I had changed.

Despite feeling ever so American the entire time I was living in Lille, I now felt entirely too French. It would seem I am no longer 100% either way.

Comment Dit-on?

One of my family's stories is about my Uncle Gene. Gene studied abroad while he was in college, spending a semester living in Vienna, Austria. When he came back from being abroad, my mother says, he used to flaunt it in everyone’s faces, continually asking, “oh wait… how do you say [insert German word] in English again?”

I would always laugh at how pompous Uncle Gene had been, sure of the fact that he was just being snobby and shoving his German knowledge under everyone’s noses.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have become Uncle Gene.

Since moving home, I am often times unable to think up a word in English. My sentences no longer flow. I find myself starting a sentence in a way that only makes sense in French.

I’ve been home for quite a while now, and yet I continue to find myself in situations where my brain is unable to come up with an American equivalent of what I want to say.

Sure, when I came home after a semester of studying abroad in Paris I didn’t have this problem, but when I compare my study abroad experience to my uncle’s (I got to Skype home every weekend and spoke English at school; he never got to call home and was immersed in a German university), I say he really did earn the right to forget English words.

And while I still do feel ridiculous and pretentious every time I forget a word in my native language, I know I’m not doing it on purpose or to show off.

It’s made me “rethink” my opinion of my uncle.

Have you moved back home after a long period abroad? How long did it take you to feel like your English was back to Native-Speaker-Normality? It's been 4 months already, brain, get it together!