Five days ago I landed in the US.\u00a0 And not just for vacation. I am here to stay.\u00a0 For a while at least.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a whirlwind these last few weeks, trying to cram European travel in, all the while preparing to move to a different country.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an incredibly intimidating feeling to move across the Atlantic, even when this move was coming home.\u00a0 But home has become increasingly fluid for me over the last couple of years.\u00a0 After three years in Sweden, it became home. I created a life for myself filled with good friends, good family, a good job, and great memories.\u00a0 It was hard to take off from Stockholm.\u00a0 It might have been even harder to land in Newark and then Denver.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when it struck me just how ingrained the Swedish language had become in my life.\u00a0 English was everywhere.\u00a0 In Sweden, every time I heard English being spoken in public, my ears perked up.\u00a0 I did a little tjuvlyssning if you will.\u00a0 And it was wonderful just to hear my native language being spoken. It always seemed to brighten my day just a little bit because it felt like a piece of home.\u00a0 But my life was dominated by Swedish.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t realized just how immersed I had become.\u00a0 It was a wonderful realization.\u00a0 Kind of.\u00a0 Because while the language skills that can be picked up during immersion are impressive, returning to your home country can be overwhelming.\u00a0 Suddenly those English conversations that I would pick up on sporadically in Stockholm were everywhere in Newark.\u00a0 What should have been background noise became instead a steady stream of words and conversations that I was unable to block out.\u00a0 It was an incredible display of reverse culture shock and one that I was not expecting.<\/p>\n
I knew there would be certain things during my move that would toss me into the heart of reverse culture shock.\u00a0 From the benign, like going to the grocery store, to the stereotypical, like driving everywhere.\u00a0 But I speak English.\u00a0 It\u2019s my native language.\u00a0 It shouldn\u2019t be overwhelming.\u00a0 But it was.\u00a0 Horribly.<\/p>\n
What have you noticed when traveling abroad that has resulted in the most culture shock when you returned home?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five days ago I landed in the US.\u00a0 And not just for vacation. I am here to stay.\u00a0 For a while at least.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a whirlwind these last few weeks, trying to cram European travel in, all the while preparing to move to a different country. It\u2019s an incredibly intimidating feeling to move across…<\/p>\n