Many returnees find it hard to re-align to their original culture. They encounter what is called ‘’reverse culture shock'’. This is anything but surprising. Imagine, after living and studying 3 or 5 years in the U.S. or a common wealth country where English is spoken by everybody (you probably have formed the tendancy to even think in English) and people are more polite and less rude, how acceptable you’d think when seeing people around you spitting into the ground, making loud phone calls on a bus, or short-passing you in order to be served first? Actually you don’t have much of a chance to get rid of the feeling of an ‘’outsider'’.

The reason why returnees feel the impact of reverse-culture shock is,what they adopted and assimilated in terms of way of living,norms and somehow values from the western world contradict what they observed and are dominating in the local society. And they tend to resist to shift back to the "old ways" especially when they believe what they attained from the west are more ‘’civilized'’ or ‘’advanced'’ norms and values. It isn’t hard at all to imagine the painful feeling of observing the differences and the potential of compromise forced at them to get going in the locality. Those people who feel most painful in this process are those ones who accepted and endorsed profoundly the western angles.

　　Facing the challenge of reverse-culture shock and in the mean time realizing not much can be done to make a difference, the best solution to overcome the anxiety I’d recommend is to try to think that the way that the local guys behave doesn’t have a specific meaning at all, and it definately isn’t waged to insult anybody in the neighborhood. So, just don’t over-react!


OMG, don’t kill me! :wink: