Articles
Here are 3 articles that I chose about a subject that interets me : Culture shock.
→1st article← "Culture shock - A personal story" by Judith Enders (internations.org)
This article talks about the different phases that Judith, a German student went through when going to study in Australia. At first, she was really excited, and she went through what she calls the "honeymoon phase", when you are super happy and discovering the country. But as the weeks were passing by, she started to feel really badly homesick. She felt really depressed every evening. She missed home, the language, the bread, the transport… She called this phase, the "negotiation phase". After a few months, she started to adapt herself, she developed a little routine which really helped her dealing with stress. She made friends who even told her she was a real Australian now. Today, Judith is still in touch with her Australian host family and she is now working abroad, in Argentina.
→2nd article← "I wasn't prepared for the culture shock of being an international student" by Emma Lagarde (theguardian.com)
This article is about a Dutch student moving from home to study in Scotland. She faced a real culture shock and home sickness. We might think that Scotland and the Netherlands are not that far away from each other and that the culture shock is not that severe, but this article shows that it actually is. First, she found that that her English was not as good as she thought since she had to ask people to repeat themselves a lot. The way of clothing was so different that she became insecure about her look and began to borrow clothes to her Scottish flat mates. After a couple of months, she made more friends which helped her a lot, she even started to see all the good sides. Now looking back at all the shocks she experienced, it became good stories to tell her friends.
→3rd article← "My reverse culture shock: returning from a year abroad is tough" by Frances Carruthers (theguardian.com)
This article is really different from the others, it's about a "reverse" culture shock. Here Frances is talking about returning home after a life-changing year in Canada. Living with his parents again after a year experiencing life by himself, it felt like a step backward. He describes his return as the feeling when "waking up from a strange thing". While he was adapting himself to the Canadian culture, things changed at home (friendships for example) and he did change too.