Culture Shock? More like language shock.

Culture shock is a strange thing. I know I've written about it before, but I'll recap. Culture shock (at least for me) does not play out like in the movies. It isn't screaming and crying in a crowd while being overwhelmed by different sights, smells, tastes, and sounds. It's the insidious sapping of your morale and will to function. You notice it in small ways, like deciding to eat in (because it means not having to deal with a server at a restaurant) or an increase in how much Netflix or TV you watch. I never really ran into this living in Chennai, though I did run into some difficulty adjusting to the different work culture of the State Department (vs my previous jobs as a contractor to the Defense Department).

However, mere days after arriving in Buenos Aires, I hit a pretty hard language wall. The city of Buenos Aires is not unlike large cities in the US, however (unsurprisingly) everyone speaks Spanish. Surprisingly few people can or are willing to speak English in day-to-day life. Similarly, I've never been particularly adept at languages, even when studying abroad. This fact has been particularly poignant here. In retrospect, Chennai sidesteps this problem as practically every single person you meet speaks English AND as someone who doesn't look Indian, people would default to speaking to me in English. Other than my clothes (and general lack of fashion), I very easily blend in with the Argentines, so I am regularly confronted by my inability to communicate. Writing this many many months later, I can say I've reached an equilibrium with my discomfort and awkwardness.

I have, of course, been trying to learn Spanish, both for work and for my personal sanity outside work, but we also had a new baby shortly after arriving. Any parent knows that your time mysteriously disappears when children are involved, and you start to really cherish your free time (which makes me less likely to spend it on studying!). I've been pretty consistent with Duolingo, so I guess we'll see how effective that is. (Spoiler alert, not very!) I do 3 'lessons' or 30xp per day at a minimum, and I've maintained that streak for over 200 days. My goal is to keep it up for my entire tour or until I'm comfortable speaking Spanish... so yeah, my entire tour!

In the mean time, I leave you with the most valuable phrase to know when traveling in a Spanish-speaking country (if you don't speak Spanish):

Mi aerodeslizador esta lleno de anguilas : My hovercraft is full of eels.

You never know when you need to show someone just how completely you don't understand a word they are saying. Open with this and, trust me, they'll know.

Getting Around: Chennai vs Frankfurt

I noticed something strange while in Frankfurt. Despite the relative similarity (both culturally and linguistically) of Germany and the US, I actually found it slightly more stressful to be in Frankfurt than I do in Chennai. I believe this is because I don't stand out as much in Germany. 

In India, I am very clearly seen as an expat, so when I walk into stores, everyone speaks English to me. In addition, English is the default written language for pretty much everything around town, except political ads. The result is a sense of relative normality in my daily life. Sure, there are people speaking in Tamil around me, but even then there are a ton of English words intermixed. 

However, in Germany... everything is in German (I KNOW, I was surprised also) and when I interact with people, there is always that brief confusion and awkwardness where I have to explain that I don't speak German (generally by saying "Englisch?" with a hopeful/questioning tone.) Once back in Chennai, I really realized how easy it is to get around here. Essentially everyone speaks English (at least enough for our interaction levels), everything is written in English, and as a foreigner it is the default language people approach me with. 

Menninger's Morale Curve

Whatever happened to the frequency of my posts on this blog? [For those not reading this blog in real time, I've since back-posted several articles.] Well, let me tell you a story about cultural readjustment and morale overseas. As it turns out, I'm not actually the first person in the world to move overseas. (I know, right? I was shocked too!) The PeaceCorps and Foreign Service have been doing this for awhile and they (and others) have studied the effects on their people. Both have found that morale forms a W over the course of a two year tour. The transplantee starts the W with a peak of high expectations and excitement for being in a new place. Their mood slowly worsens as the honeymoon ends and they fall into their first valley, commonly called culture shock. Things start to recover as they accept their situation and adjust their expectations. This is where the Foreign Service diverts from the graph. Our middle peak comes right around when we're learning where our next post will be. The realization that we're leaving causes people to "check-out" from their current position and start fantasizing about the onward assignment. Finally the last peak begins the honeymoon period of your next post.

So... when I was starting to have motivation issues approximately six months after I arrived, my more veteran colleagues quickly pointed out that it was "just my time." It's kind of depressing how cookie-cutter my symptoms were from the link above. I love Chennai (and that's not the middle peak speaking), but I think any major life change has its challenges and we pretty much changed every part of our life when we took this job.

Anyway, since February I've gotten over my hump and things are smooth sailing again. I've thought of a bunch of potential blog posts, so things should pick back up. I'll be curious to see how this curve compares in the future when I'm more acclimated to this lifestyle and experience other posts with higher or lower hardship ratings.