23 Culture Shock and Awe
Posted by Christine on Nov 24, 2014 in Ireland | 13 comments Last month I was exchanging emails about this blog and other things with Craig Okino, a dear friend from college, when he learned I was returning from Dublin to Atlanta for six days to attend a wedding on November 1. “I’m curious to hear if you experience a little ‘culture shock’ upon your return to the US,” Craig wrote, “…the subject of your next blog, perhaps?” And in a subsequent message, “I’m very interested to hear what happens when you guys return to your old lives.” Living in Hawaii and visiting the mainland every year, Craig knows a lot about culture shock. But while I said I’d give it a try, I wasn’t really sure I’d have enough to say when I got back to Dublin. I’ve only been living in Ireland for four months. No big deal. And I travel a fair amount, so I know there are always adjustments, big and small, when crossing borders, even local ones. I’ve been going back and forth to Ireland regularly for almost thirty years, so there won’t be any surprises, right? Not so fast! Four months in residence is no two-week vacation, I soon realized. From the moment we landed in Atlanta, I felt caught between my two worlds—the sabbatical bubble in Dublin and the hive of activity surrounding my life in Atlanta. Remember the episode of Star Trek in which some of characters are in a speeded up universe, while the rest are in a parallel but slowed down one? To the slow people, the fast ones are only a buzz in the air, while the fast ones see the others moving almost imperceptibly in slow motion around them. Over that long weekend in Atlanta, I seemed to be negotiating both universes at the same time. Committing to live somewhere for a year means you will open yourself more to life in that place than you might during a brief stay with the vacation spirit about it. To prepare for the year away, I made sure that I got out or rotated off of everything I was doing at home: the department chair’s job, committees, my seventeen year journal editorship, volunteer work at the kids’ former school, visiting lecturer gigs, and more. I traded a house in Atlanta for a small rental apartment in Dublin with minimal furnishings, where when something goes wrong, the landlord fixes it. I devised...read more