Culture shock is an inevitable aspect of living overseas for most people. If you’ve taken any culture classes or spent time abroad, you know it has stages, beginning with the honeymoon period. This lasted almost 6 months for us, where we were fascinated by the new culture and riding the high of discovery and adventure. 😍 “We love the sunny, warm weather! The fresh juice is amazing! The people are so friendly toward Americans!”
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Then, day by day, the exact same cultural differences started becoming less fascinating and more annoying. “Ughh this oppressive heat is seriously incompatible with human life. No more juice – all I want is a Guinness. If another person flipping asks me about Trump, I’m going to snap.” The reality of this place being not just a vacation destination, but our new home, sunk in, and we started wondering if we had made a mistake.
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Everyone assured us it would get better with time and a couple months later we realized they were right. But those were very hard months where simple daily tasks depleted our energy and we were unable to muster any extra strength for building relationships, learning language or enjoying ourselves. Eventually the daily tasks got easier as we understood their processes and got better at communicating. We started managing stress better, found friends we could ask for help, and finally stopped checking flight prices to America. Life became less of a struggle each day and joy seeped back in as we learned to appreciate the differences we encountered and trust we were in the right place.
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I’m grateful for our culture shock experience because it gave me more compassion and respect for people who endure these difficult experiences all the time (and often alone) – like the international students I worked with in Ohio and Atlanta, or immigrant and refugee families, or my single lady friends here in Saudi. They are strong, resilient, and admirable.
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There are still ups and downs in life here. We miss a lot about America, but there’s enough about Saudi that we like and we don’t have intentions of leaving anytime soon. There’s also that thing called reverse culture shock and I am so not ready to go through that again. 😆
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