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daily kansan
wednesday ◀
9.9.98
eight.a
Imagine experencing culture shock in your own country.
Going to another country usually produces feelings of unease. You step off the plane, and all of a sudden you're a complete stranger. You're alone in a place where the people are different, the food is different, maybe the language is different. And there you are—nervous, excited and clueless.
"Culture shock was 10 times worse coming home than going," said Joelle Eidsness, Brookings, S.D., senior.
Most students expect this when they study abroad. What they don't always anticipate is the difficulty of readjusting to life in America.
Eidness spent last summer studying in Beijing, China, through Princeton University and then moved to Nanjing for a year through the University of Kansas.
The differences between home and abroad can show themselves in a lot of unsettling ways.
"I freaked out," she said. "I looked out the window, and there was nothing. Things seemed really clean and
Home even looks strange when you haven't seen it for a long time. Eidsen left Beijing in June and flew to Sioux Falls, S.D. D.She said that even through the plane window, South Dakota seemed empty compared to crowded China.
Jared Stone, Lawrence senior, spent the spring semester in Stirling, Scotland. When he Stone also was jarred by the appearance of the United States.
"Over there, the streets are very curvy. There's no particular order," he said. "Here, everything is on a grid. It's very sterile and boring."
When you've been away long enough to feel at home in another country, things once familiar look foreign at first. But the feelings of alienation go beyond the cosmetic.
Nancy Mitchell, Assistant Director of the KU Office of Study Abroad, said that most students had problems readjusting to life in the United States.
"Here, everything's snap! snap!
snap!" he said.
"It's normal, and there are varying degrees of it," she said. "It's often the student that adapts completely to life abroad that has more difficulties coming back."
The routines that once constituted the only way of life you'd ever known may not fit with changes in your personality or your new outlook on life. James McShane, Minneapolis senior, who spent six months in Wollongong, Australia, said getting used to the fast pace of life in the United States was difficult. He said Australians were a more relaxed, no-worries society.
With all of this strangeness around you, how can you manage to readjust to life in good old Lawrence, Kansas?
Surely you can still count on your family and friends. You've known them forever. You've thought about them, maybe written to a few. They couldn't have changed.
But their lives did go on pretty much as normal without you; they are different now. Like your favorite pair of worn-out jeans, the people you knew inside and out may be at first a tight, uncomfortable fit. Your family, friends, classmates and professors may look the same, but chances are your relationships will feel different as a result of changes in you and the people you know.
Stone said that although he had looked forward to seeing his friends at home again, things did not go exactly as they had before.
"I don't think I ever see people the same as when I left," he said. "But they will become familiar again." Jen Smith, Manhattan senior, spent a semester in Israel and and a semester in the West Bank. She said she hadn't experienced any problems with her friends. In fact, one close friend often forgets that she was gone last year. Her difficulty has been with Lawrence itself.
"What's really hard here is things
have changed," she said. It's frustrating, she said, to go to a favorite store and find that it had moved.
Coming home isn't all bad, though. For students who have been in non-English speaking countries, returning to the United States means being understood all the time. Smith said her year sometimes was difficult because she wasn't fluent in Hebrew.
"Bad language days were horrible," she said. "The whole world seemed to be going in the wrong direction, and it had to be raining out(side)."
Eidsness said her problem with language arose when she returned to the United States. She was used to the higher volume of Chinese speech and also to the fact that she could speak English and that no one would understand.
"I talked louder," she said, "I couldn't realize people around me could understand what I was saying because I was so used to people not understanding." While the places KU students went and their difficulties in returning varied, there is one experience universal among travelers: the desire to travel again.
"When I was in Scotland, I was sad to leave and eager to be back," Stone said. "Now I'm sad to be back and eager to leave."
Students who have been out of the country during the past semester may not have heard about many major events that happened this year. In fact, some still may be unknown to them. Here's a refresher:
January
SAY WHAT?
1: All California bars, clubs and card rooms must be smoke free.
1: U.S. Census Bureau estimated United States population at 268,921,733 people.
2: An autopsy of Chris Farley shows he overloaded on opiates and cocaine
5: Rep. Sonny Bono (R Calif.) died while skiing. He was 62.
boys head coach
6. Barry Switzer resigned as Dallas Cow-
B: Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski asked to act as his own lawyer.
8: World trade Center dumped him
Ahmed Yourso sentenced to life in prison
74
8: World Trade Center bomber Remzi
and Xavier sentenced to life in prison
15. NASA announced John Glenn, 76,
planned to飞 in space again.
17: President Bill Clinton faced sexual harassment charges from Paula Jones
25: Super Bowl XXII: Denver Broncos beat Green Bay Packers 31-24.
18. Boston Celtics retired Robert Parrish's jersey.
ica beat World 8-7 at Vancouver.
18: 55th Golden Globes Awards
18: 48H NHL All-Star Game: North Americaica beat World 87 at Vancouver.
26. Clinton said, "I want to say one thing to the American people: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky *
29: Woman's Clinic in Birmingham, AL
29. Woman's Clinic in Birmingham, Alo,
bombed; 1 killed
February
1. NFLPro Bowl Game, AFC beat NFC 29: 24
6- Johann Hoezel Falco, singer ("Rock at
amadeus"), died at 40.
8: 48th NBA All-Star Game: East beat West
135,114.
12. A U.S. district judge declared line-item veto law unconstitutional
18: Chicago Cubs sportscaster Harry
Caray died at 77.
24. Comedian Henny Youngman died at 23
25: 40th Grammy Awards
25: Pamela Lee has husband Tommy Lee arrested on battery charges
March
15: Kansas basketball lost to Rhode Island.
17: USA Women's hockey team beat
Canada for first Olympic gold medal
23: 70th Academy Awards
24: Mitchell Johnson, 14, and Andrew Golden, 12, shot four classmates and a teacher to死 in Jonesboro, Ark.
30: 60th NCAA men's basketball champi
June
onship; Kentucky beat Utah.
9: Black man dragged behind truck in freeway Texas
30: Unknown Soldier confirmed as Michael Blassie.
July
24. Gunman kills two security guards during shooting at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington.
August
7. Terrorists bomb two U.S. embassies in eastern Africa.
19. Boston Globe columnist Mike Barricle resigns amid new charges of plagiarism.
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