So how do you re-adjust?

I am now in the United States of America....and have been for one week.  I plan to keep blogging for a little while.

 

This first week has been interesting.  Before I left Madagascar, I did two very important things:  1)  I secured a short-term job that started immediately 2)  I skimmed a book about readjusting from time spent as an expatriate (cannot recall the title)

 

I am working at the best bookstore in the world--a bookstore I worked at many years ago.  Instead of being overwhelmed by Wal-Mart and other big box stores (which I can assure you are incomprehensible after shopping at an outdoor market for so long) I am simply putting away books and enjoying the second-hand knowledge this fosters.  Also, without something to do for a few hours a day I would have more time to just feel "weird" as one returned Peace Corps Volunteer described.  She said, "Don't stress out.  Sometimes you are going to look around a room and just feel weird."   If I had nothing to do all day except browse jobs on craigslist I am sure I would be in a different mood.

 

I also skimmed a great book which gave some wonderful advice.  It said that one of the hardest parts of returning from living overseas is that you expect other people to be endlessly fascinated by your journey AND at the same time you find their lives boring.  In other words, you are an asshole while thinking other people are not paying attention to you.   "I don't care about your life!  Don't you want to hear another story about how it was in Madagascar!"   So the book was my intervention and I have been focusing on asking other people what they have been up to.  It has been working well.  As far as Madagascar stories I do sneak them in in passing.  It would be hard not to since it is my frame of reference right now.

 

As for reverse culture shock, that is happening in its own way.  When I arrived in Niger I was in absolute culture shock.  Everything was new to me I had to reorganize my entire categorization system to make room for how things looked.  It is not like that now.  I am familiar with everything.  Yet, all day every day I notice things differently.  Everything seems so rich, so full of concrete, so well timed, so organized and so mechanical almost.  It is sort of like meeting an ex years later.  They are familiar but you see them with new eyes.  Things do not look the same to me.  I guess I choose that comparison because I remember why the United States made sense to me, but at the moment it doesn't.   I am more in touch with why I left.   That said, I do not feel bitter or angry or judgmental.  I feel like I felt in Madagascar.  Receptive and confused.  :)