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EVS - My Experience Living With Another Culture!

At the first time when we decide to live in another country, I guess we all are contented, but this happen just for a moment. After that happy moment we stop and think, ask questions to ourselves, well… it’s not so easy to live in another country! So we imagine ourselves going there in that particular place, and still we come up with different questions. What about living in away from my family, my friends, what about cultural differences, people, language, making new friends, everything new.

It must be difficult! We start experiencing fear and confusion and many other feeling inside. However the only thing that might crosses our mind at the moment is; isn’t it better to give up, it is better living in our country ,surrounded by our culture , but we are wrong because we should experience the feeling living in another culture and facing cultural difficulties, that’s make us stronger and more aware of our own culture. Then we get there, we see it is difficult, especially the first three months when we try to adjust with all unknown factors.

For me, the biggest difficulties were at the beginning, I assume it would have been the same for everyone. I just had had three days I had arrived and I didn’t like anything there, didn’t want to live there longer. I would start crying and whispering; I want to go home! I was experiencing the cultural shock, I knew.

It took me three months to get use to another lifestyle. I had issues with speaking their language, getting to know the culture, don’ts and dos, understanding people’s behavior. At the beginning I was being very passive and was just observing. I thought that was the best thing to do, to observe how people behave, how they think, hoe they treat each-other, how they joke and many other things closely related to their culture. So that was my job at the beginning, being a good observer and trying to put in action, somehow their behavior!

It was difficult to keep in mind all the time, what should I do, what should I say, is that behavior acceptable for that culture or not. It’s difficult also to think all the time how things I would say or do would sound for the ears of others with a different culture.

Later on I understood it was quite normal to have misunderstandings, to have dilemmas. Sometimes when something would go wrong because of cultural differences I would say; what’s wrong with them or strange people! What I would try to make a joke the would not laugh and vice versa. Later on I had a better understanding of all this big confusion. I understood it was nothing wrong with me or them but it was the confusion of cultures. After some time when everything become a part of me and especially the culture, when everything become familiar to me , when I got use to everything it was difficult to leave. It seemed I had been there for ages and didn’t want to live but still I now I was able to make the comparison between my culture and the learnt culture. Forcing myself to understand that I cannot be in tow places at once, no matter how hard I try!

Dealing with the Cultural Shock!

Of course I found hundreds of little concrete things that justify my miserable feelings, but I tried to distance myself a little bit from all the small things to get the whole picture of what might be happening to me.

I tried to be open and tolerant towards others. There are problems that can be caused by cultural misunderstandings or differences. I never took it personally because in many cases, he/she meant no harm.

I tried to share some elements of my culture with the people around me. I tried not to judge! Even if it sounds trivial I tried to tell myself: It is not better, it is not worse, It is just different!

Think Globally, Act Internationally.