Understanding Culture Shock

Culture Shock

• Culture shock is a feeling experienced when someone moves to a new place with a different culture.
• People typically go through three stages during culture shock: initial/honeymoon, frustration, adjustment, and adaptation/acceptance.
• The initial stage involves romanticizing the new culture, while the frustration stage involves a negative feeling toward the new environment and a yearning for the familiar.
• The adjustment stage comes with getting used to the environment and adapting to the new culture, and the acceptance stage involves integrating into the new surroundings.
• Finding a balance between home and host country values is not necessary.

Definitions

• Frustration: A strong, sad feeling of missing one's home when physically away.
• Homesickness: An unhappy and worried mental state caused by a strong, sad feeling of missing one's home when physically away.
• Disturbance: A feeling of being annoyed because you cannot control a situation.
• Invaluable: Extremely useful
• Adjustment: A change in the way someone behaves or thinks.
• Integration: The process of fitting into a community.

Diana's Experience

• Diana, a student from Aleppo, Syria is studying in Montreal, Canada.
• The climate in Syria is Mediterranean, with mild, rainy winters.
• Canada has a very different climate, with very cold and snowy winters.
• Diana found that Montreal has well-heated buildings and an underground city system to stay warm during winter.
• Diana found the food in Montreal delicious, but different from her home cuisine, but she misses her mother's food.
• She notes that Canadian national dishes like poutine, Montreal bagels, and butter tarts are different from Syria's.
• She experienced maple syrup, a Canadian delicacy, for the first time.
• She notes how hard it is to get used to a new culture.
• She learned to avoid making quick judgments and try to understand the local culture's perspective.
• She observed that people in Montreal did not easily adapt to the new culture and often returned home.