From another ex-pat recently moved back to the US:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/opinion/sunday/ta-ta-london-hello-awesome.html?smid=pl-share

I didn't experience 100% of what she describes in her commentary, though most of it was very familiar to me. I admired her for putting it in print. 
Going through the re-settlement process is not easy and it is helpful to find these little gems of validation from others. 


I will refer to it when I elaborate on my own experiences in a future post. Stay tuned. 

~Em

The California Sun!

OK, most of my friends back in the UK would say they are so jealous that I was going to be in California for the summer. It is true, California weather is amazing. But they don't know.... it lasts for four months!!!! In all honesty, after so many days of +93F/34C to me it is just really hot.  

Yes it is beautiful, sunny and blue skies everyday, which really is quite nice, I won't lie. I haven't seen so many cloudless blue skies in years. Seriously... years... this is not an exaggeration. Yet, maybe this is too much of a good thing?  

It is so hot that I can't be outdoors in certain times of the day, I think I am melting! And then at night it is lovely and beautiful outside, but inside my room is a sauna. 

Of course I do know that I just need to get accustomed to it. Get used to moving outside in the heat. For goodness sake I could handle it when I was younger. I tell myself I can do it again, it's in my blood!

But I must be honest...I miss London weather. The gloomy cloudy, rainy summer days. Those days when we'd all get excited because the forecast said we were going to have a nice weekend. Then seeing everyone out there in the park getting lobster red as they had their first exposure to real sun that year. Mind you the high would normally be about 77F/25C and if we were lucky a few days may even be about 86F/30C.

Oh how I miss wearing layers and never knowing what to expect weather wise. And always having a cardigan and scarf in my bag for when it got cold at night. 

Ahh well... I suppose this year I may actually get a bit of a tan :) 

What has this really taught me these last two months? ... I need a proper California summer wardrobe! I do not have nearly enough summer clothes :) 

~T

The Floating Dock - How do I anchor myself?

It "feels like I've been dropped on a floating dock in the middle of a familiar lake.  I see the shore and know it, but don't really feel like swimming towards it." 

I love what Em has said here as it really captures what returning home is like - the conflicting emotions of familiarity, loneliness and isolation.

Like Em I was 17 when I left and I too only returned for weeks at a time. I won't lie, there was a year and a half that I did have to return home in between my time in Zimbabwe and Washington, DC. However I refer to this as my rebuilding year as I prepared for the next step - grad school. I even managed to get a grant for Chinese language study, so I felt OK because I was still pursuing my goal. I knew where I was going (grad school) and why (to eventually become an anthropologist - this did not happen).

That's why I like the Floating Dock analogy. It's been about 2 months since I've returned back to California and I am struggling with my attachment to this place. Which is interesting actually as my PhD dissertation was going to look exactly at these issues within resettled populations in China (crooked smile). I've realised it is not only about an attachment to place but also the experiences that you associate with those places. I am having to reconcile the two very different versions of myself - before and after London.


There is a part of me that finds solace in my being a floating dock. It is safe. Until I swim to shore and anchor myself I am not really here, haven't really returned. I can imagine that I am still abroad.

Of course, I can't remain floating out there in the middle of the lake. I have to find a way of becoming attached again. Until I do I won't figure out what's next. For me, that is the secret of returning home. Having to navigate the integration of my experiences and this new identity I have created abroad with my past life here.

(Oh and considering the length of this post, I've taken another cue from Em and had a bit of fun with the colours)

 
~ T

The Floating Dock (and what is 'reverse culture shock', anyway?')

Most of the Google searches on Reverse Culture Shock (aka 'Re-entry') yield blogs of young students and missionaries returning after a tour, or business articles for staff positioned abroad and ending contracts. Some people have even devised U-curves and W-graphs to demonstrate the process graphically.  Many describe it as, surprisingly, a more difficult adjustment than culture shock when moving abroad. 

In 1992 after I was a university student abroad in London, I experienced a brief taste of reverse culture shock. I wasn't ready to leave London, and resented returning to the big, loud, sunny west coast. I was 20. 

Younger students, religious missionaries, seconded professionals living abroad from six months to four years: none of these are quite the same as resettling abroad to be married for what you think will be the rest of your natural life, or at least 30 years until retirement.  I emigrated 'permanently' at 31 and left three months shy of 41. 

The initial arrival and adjustment phase when relocating to a foreign country is essentially a short flurry of excitement followed by a grieving process. In 2004-05, I went through all the stages of grief while I reflected on the loss of my old identity as an independent woman established in North Beach, San Francisco. 

If I'd still been fiercely attached to California in 2004, I wouldn't have left when I did. I was ready for a new adventure. (For those who know of the story of my time in Wales, it was not quite the adventure I'd hoped for). 

Returning now in 2013 feels like I've been dropped on a floating dock in the middle of a familiar lake. I see the shore and know it, but don't really feel like swimming towards it. I also don't have a desire to go back where I just came from. Where does one go after London? I know I want change, but for now I am perched on the dock, assessing my future options. 

When I left the US, I was already a reasonably mature adult with an identity and strong sense of self. That all had to be re-invented in the UK, and it took a long time. (The bureaucracy there did not make it efficient, by any means). 

I found being a citizen in my non-native country across the Atlantic meant I was, consciously or unconsciously, systematically filtering and navigating my way through a series of many small (some large) adjustments in order to survive.  I had to develop a set of heuristics tailored to UK living. 

For example, understanding and obeying the unwritten and unspoken 'rules' of traffic, whether you are a pedestrian, cyclist or motorist is necessary if you want to live.

My new environment eventually became normal and my expectations were realigned.

So how does a middle-aged person reconcile that to adequately fit in to their hometown again? 

I've never stayed in my hometown for more than three weeks as a adult. I left at 17 for university. It's been a month and the presence of my serene surroundings that may have made me restless at 16 are actually comforting and pleasant now.

(There is nothing significant to the font color changes; I only mixed it up to thwart your potential ennui)

~Em