Stepping off the plane, it's different. Walking into the airport, laden with over-packed luggage and gifts, you feel a familiar sense of anticipation. Then it begins to really set in. Reverse culture shock — you've returned home to a place you don't really know anymore; people who are your family, but not the one you just left; best friends who don't know you anymore; and, a country that you've referred to as "home" throughout your exchange, but that feels more foreign than the place you're coming from. And, that's only the beginning.
My journey back into life in the United States began in August of 1994, and it isn't over yet. I walked through customs in Miami airport, and the official said, "Welcome home! Bet you're glad to be back!" Couldn't he see that I'd just left home? Wasn't it obvious that I'd been crying for the past week, calling my parents and asking them if I couldn't stay another month? Totally stressed out and out of place, I headed toward the nearest phone bank to call my parentsin both countriesto let them know that I was in Miami, en route to Illinois, and I lit a cigarette. I was promptly approached by security personnel, and told that Miami International Airport was a smoke-free facility… there weren't any of those in Ecuador. Where was I? That was just the beginning. Everything that had become so familiar was now foreign, and I was going back to a home that I didn't even know anymore.
Living in Ecuador for a year was the most interesting, educational, and meaningful experience of my life to this point. Not every day was wonderful, nor was every moment full of discovery, but I had become totally acculturated to another lifestyle for the first time. Everything from maids, guards, a socialite mother, a coffee-baron father, and private high school to the faces of extreme poverty, families with 15 children, and water that needed to be boiled before it was potable had become normal. I'd learned the Spanish language, and lived in Latin American culture. Returning home to my old life was nothing like I had expected. I had thought that I'd start over where I had left off, and that other people might have problemsnot me! During the long car trip home that night, I found myself almost in tears when I couldn't come up with English words for certain things and feelings, and I knew that whatever this was, it was not going to be easy. My parents were glad to have me back, and they wanted to hear all about it, but there was not way they could have ever even begun to understand what I was feeling. If I couldn't remember the word "maroon," how was I supposed to walk right back into my life?
The first weekend that I was home, my friends took me to a party where I saw everyone who I had thought I had been "missing" the entire year before. After asking how my year had been and letting me get out about three sentences before their eyes glazed over in disinterest, they'd launch into discussions of things I couldn't even understand anymore.
"Oh my God, prom was so cool. We took a limo…"
"Last winter I was dating Chad, but then I found out that he had a girlfriend at…"
"Do you remember hanging out with those guys? He got arrested for selling drugs last February."
"When I went to Cancun for Spring Break…"
"There was a huge party in the woods and the cops came because we were drinking beer…"
I found myself looking at these people and wondering how I was going to survive another year of high school with them. In Ecuador, I'd had a boyfriend and I'd had to leave him, but no one cared about that. In Ecuador, I'd done my share of drinking, but since it wasn't so highly illegal, it hadn't been some drama-filled, super-cool clandestine affair. In Ecuador… During the weeks before school started, I have no idea how many times my thoughts began with that phrase.
Living at home was no picnic either. I had lived abroad with a family that was a lot more relaxed on some issues than mine ever had been, and coming home to things like an 11:00 PM curfew (later copied directly out of the Illinois State Police handbook, highlighted, and posted on the refrigerator) did not fall into my new ideas of independence and autonomy. I fought everythingfrom the curfew to their plans to regulate my friendships and social life, from being asked to go to church to being told to turn down the volume of my Mana CD. Nothing was right, according to me, and I wanted everyone to know just how bad it was. The food wasn't the same, no one hugged or kissed, no one spoke Spanish, no one knew how salsa dancing until daybreak at a New Year's Eve party on the beach with all your closest friends and then going out for a cerveza and ceviche de pescado made the whole year that much more special.
Looking back, reverse culture shock wasn't only hard on me. It's a wonder that my parents didn't throw me out. If you asked them, there were certainly days that their wishes and mine were the same! Get her back to Ecuador! I did a lot of yelling, crying, sleeping, and complaining in the first few months. "My year" had come to a screeching halt, and no one understood. My family did what they couldthey stood back and battened down the hatches. Mom would say "But, Britta, I just don't understand." I'd yell back, "And there's no way you EVER will!!!" Then I'd march off down the hall to the room that I used to think of as mine, and slam the door. I'd pull out the photo albums full of the people and places I had left, I'd cry, and then I'd sleep. On top of that, the phone calls back probably cost Mom and Dad a fortune those first few months! "This isn't home. I need to come back! I miss you so much…" My host family and friends all told me that I was welcome to come back whenever I could, so I started to focus on that.
To deal with living in a place that I wondered if I would ever call "home" again, I knew that I needed to make some changes. I started a part-time job once I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be able to go back "home" until I could afford to make the trip myself. I spent the year saving for my own graduation gifta trip back to Ecuador. I hadn't made it back in time to get involved in any sports or organized activitiesnot that I even felt like spending more time with people who didn't "get it," so I started taking college classes at the local community college to kill time after school. I threw myself into my classes, the college search, work and anything that had to do with 1) getting back to Latin America, or 2) getting out on my own. I spent about four months totally out of sortsconfused, hurt, angry, misunderstood, and unwilling to listen to anyone else.
Eventually, a lot of the initial shock wore off. Just like the culture shock that hits when you're newly arrived in your host county, the reverse culture shock starts out as something you think you'll never get over, but that lessens with time. I went through the same highs and lowsgood days for a week and then a horrible weekend, a few days where I was able to get into the Homecoming festivities a school, then a phone call from my friends in Ecuador that would put me in tearsthat I had gone through when I was away for a year. Eventually, I concluded that reverse culture shock is, to a point, a sign of a successful exchange. If I was missing that culture, if I was so full of it in my heart and soul, if my home felt foreign, then I must have succeeded in my exchange.
Somehow I needed to move on, and that was the hardest part. I felt as though moving on would invalidate the entire experience. I thought that becoming comfortable in Illinois again would negate having a home in Ecuador. Finally, I realized that was simply NOT true. I realized that Ecuador was only the beginning. I had college ahead of me, and within that context there were more opportunities for life abroad. After that there would be career opportunities for people willing to travel abroad. I could have more foreign "families," more friends, and more opportunitiesand I have.
I said that reverse culture shock is something that I'm still going through because it is. There are still days that I wonder why some people here don't care about anything outside their immediate realm of consciousness. There are still moments when I feel like a foreigner in my own country. There are still times that I long for the places and people I left behind, and feel like no one here "gets it." But I've moved on, just as everyone eventually does. Since living in Ecuador, I did go back. However, I've also lived in Spain and Mexico, traveled more and plan to take one of those jobs that allows me to work abroad after I finish my graduate degree in Latin American Studies. My family and I get along well now, but that's because we all know that there are parts of my life that they'll never experience the way that I did. Many of my high school friends did exchange programs in college, and now they understand better why coming home was so hard. Reverse culture shock just takes time to get through, and sometimes realizing that is the most difficult part.
For more information, check the Web, local bookstores, and talk with other returned students. Many colleges and universities have Web pages focusing on the less personal side of the experience that will explain what you go through, and offer some suggestions on how to get through it. There are entire books on the subject, but many focus on the experiences that adults have when returning from years of work abroad. Not many speak to those of us who have returned and are still wondering "WHY?" If possible, find other people who do understand. Talk with other returnees, try to think of this as yet another part of the experience, and look to the future.