Culture Shock v 2.0

When I walked off the airplane, nothing could’ve reminded me I was really back in Texas like the Buc-ee’s t-shirt in the customs line right in front of me. With that first sudden plunge back into the United States, reverse culture shock began.

Trashcans are everywhere… and they’re huge. 

People all around me are mostly speaking English.

The only meal I can buy for $2.50 is a McDonald’s hamburger. 

For those first days back, every ten minutes, every place I went, every direction I turned, I slammed into reminders that I was not in Ecuador anymore as I started relearning how to do daily life in the states. I hugged a few more people than I should have hugged in greeting and just breathed a prayer of thanks that I didn’t try to kiss them on the cheek. I got to flush toilet paper in the toilet again (admittedly, that one didn’t take long to readjust to…). As I consciously talked myself through how to go about normal life, I began to glimpse the ways I had changed.

The hotel will have an elevator for me to take my luggage up in.

I can turn on the AC when I feel hot. 

I should probably start paying attention to cross-walk lights again. 

I had left for Ecuador in January and spent the months after my arrival with all my energy bent on adapting, rewiring, adjusting my daily mode of life to the culture around me. Thanks to my Mexican side and all the time spent south of the border growing up, my Latin-American background reduced the shock impact on arrival. Still, navigating a foreign country is sink-or-swim. With a little flailing, I think I learned to swim. As I learned, I changed. I gained new life-muscles, moving to a new rhythm.

Then, about a glorious month after becoming comfortable with all these new habits, it was time to come home. Back to the familiar world I’ve known all my life. Away from the people with whom I had learned to do this whole process of exploring new places and having new experiences. And reverse culture shock swung into play.

Relatives don’t come for family dinners on the weekends. 

My body’s craving plantains. 

I have to go to a special farmer’s market to find locally grown food. 

My parents welcomed me home with open arms, and I was delighted to be back. As soon as I returned, I found that I was at last no longer homesick; now, however, I became Ecuador-sick instead. Those new muscles I had learned to use felt out of place here. I loved coming home, but I missed what I’d had, and truth be told I hadn’t wanted to come back. I missed Ecuador. And perhaps most of all, as the weeks wore on, I missed Ecuador-traveling me.

But while I did have to come back to the United States, I don’t have to revert back to the person I was before this spring. I’m learning how to incorporate the ways I grew abroad into my life here, because those are changes I want to keep: modes of interaction, activities, perspectives. Coming back, I see the strengths and weaknesses of my beloved homeland even more clearly than before, just as I see them in other countries, and I want to engage with them. My time in Ecuador was and always will be invaluable in and of itself, but its impact on me doesn’t have to end there. Wherever I may journey in the world, I can choose to keep the ways I change, leaving a piece of my heart and investing in my experience and coming away different. The one thing I get to take with me wherever I go in the world is me.