I’ve been back in America for about a week and a half now and it’s been a weird transition. Though this is my second time coming back home, it is no less strange. When I first came home after 18 months away, I found America to be a very strange place but, more than that, I found the concept of “being back” even stranger.
To me, the biggest shock of coming home wasn’t cultural- it was simply the shock of being home. After my first trip, I found it hard to adjust to driving everywhere, the cost of things, and the quick pace of life here. This time around those things are still an adjustment but so is ordering a small soda the size of my hand, the meals big enough to feed a family of four, the huge cars, the lack of intelligent news networks, and “big box” Wal-Mart stores. I would say my biggest adjustment moment came when it took me a few moments to remember what the value of the coins were.
Yet all that “adjusting” has always paled in comparison to the simple shock of just “being home.” That is the hardest thing to deal with. And when travelers talk about adjusting to coming home, we most always are talking about this- for this is the hardest part. When I came home last year, I didn’t really want to see anyone. I was finding it difficult to adjust from such an “on the move” lifestyle to such a sedentary one. Yes, I wanted to see my friends and family but here I had just gotten used to the travel lifestyle, and even though it wasn’t always perfect, it was amazing and then all of sudden with one plane ride, it suddenly stopped. The brakes were suddenly slammed and that was not easy to deal with.
To quote Benjamin Button about coming home: “It’s a funny thing about comin’ home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.” While in D.C., I went and visited the James family from The Wide Wide World and we were talking about this. In the movie “A Map for Saturday,” they discuss this. And when other long term travelers talk to each other, they talk about this. And everyone’s conclusion is eerily the same: Home is wonderful but it feels very different and, in some ways, no longer home. When you try to express that to your friends, they simply can’t relate and don’t understand.
When you tell your friends about your trip, they’re interested but the more details you give, the more their eyes glaze over. They just want an easy answer. Because the more you go on, the more you just make them a) a bit jealous, b) think they haven’t done as much, though they’ve done different and exciting things, and c) bored. Any long term traveler who has come home and talked about his trip can testify to eyes glazing over after five minutes. And so when you have this angst about being home, it’s hard for anyone but other travelers to understand. Because it’s a feeling without any words. “Weird” or “surreal” or “unstimulating” are usually the best that we can use to describe it but never fully conveys our thoughts. When you talk to another traveler though, you don’t need words. They just understand. They’ve been through it too.
So the real cultural shock of being is just simply being able to cope with being home. Adjusting back to your culture doesn’t take long. Within a short time, you’ll get back into your groove and remembering the little things you loved. But dealing with leaving the travel lifestyle can take much, much longer and be much, much harder of a shock to deal with.
Matt,
Though I have never traveled abroad for longer than a few weeks at a time, I have had similar experiences living on a different coast from all of my family and friends. It’s such a difficult thing to put into words…being “home” and seeing all the same faces and the same buildings that you’ve known your entire life and somehow, it’s just not the same. I realized after a few trips home where things were trucking along much the same whereas I had been living a crazy, travel-filled life, that I was changing. My view of my old life was through older, not necessarily wiser, but changed eyes.
I cannot tell you how much I love this post. My fiance and I are preparing to move into a more nomadic lifestyle soon and something about your words struck me to the core.
Thank you for this awesome post. I am passing it around to my friends and family…hopefully, it will give them a little insight in our lives once we begin traveling.
Keep up the fantastic updates and good luck being home.
I’ve heard it called “afterparty downers” as well sometimes. I can’t bear that feeling, returning home after some journeys, where it is almost as if the volume of the world has been turned down – that there is somehow less colour and noise in your surroundings. So true that unless you are talking to another traveller, it’s near-impossible to hold your friends’ attention long enough to really try and convey the magic.
It’s hard to convey the magic but with all these great travel blogs out, you can live your trip over and over again!
This is so incredibly true. The positive side of this is no matter how long it has been since you traveled, if you have felt this feeling before, you will forever sympathize and understand others who feel this. However, sometimes being the traveler, even if there is someone truly interested and willing to listen, often the memories you hold so dear are those “you had to be there” kind of moments. I believe that is why travel writing, to me, is therapeutic. Both reading it and writing it helps alleviate that “lonely” feeling.
Yes, the reverse culture shock is always very strange (and I loved your examples of things in the states; that’s how us non-Americans feel when we get there for the first time!
)
But I still think it’s important not to get too ahead of yourself that travelling is so much better than staying put. I constantly travel (7 years straight so far), but I also go home for medium length stays (about 1-2 months) twice a year. I feel I get the best of both worlds like this, in a way.
I’m sorry but I think your only two options (EITHER they are jealous OR they realize they haven’t done as much) is quite arrogant and that is precisely why they may be rolling their eyes at you. I found myself constantly rattling on about my adventures and looking for opportunities to tell an anecdote, but never listening to their stories. In talking just about myself and how much I’ve done, I didn’t realize that maybe they had heard enough and would like to vent how their work day went or whatever.
Just because they haven’t hitchhiked through jungles and so on doesn’t mean they don’t have their own lives to live that are fully worthwhile and there are so many things that we miss out on in constantly moving location (long-term relationships, appreciating day-to-day lives with family etc.)
Keep in mind that I’m saying this as a fellow long-term traveller – the reason I like going home so often is to keep a sense of belonging and family and not just become a machine for travel anecdotes. Things change slowly back home, but that’s how life is normally. Our travels should educate us to be more aware of our world, not more arrogant about how our experiences make others jealous of us…
Feel free to let me know what you think, perhaps I misread your post, but I just think you should have included an option c) for why they roll their eyes
All the best from Prague – enjoy your time home!!
I’m not in any way lessening the experiences my friends have while at home. My point here is just to stay that most people back home can’t understand why you get into this slump or why home is so weird to you after traveling. They can’t relate to you just like you now can’t relate to 9-5 work.
I went to this wedding this weekend and when talking about my adventures (because i was asked…i normally don’t like to) everyone said “wow. my life is not that exciting.” their lives are more exciting in a different.
the point of this post was that the biggest culture shock coming is is the act of being home….not to diss the people back home as leading boring lives. i’m gonna edit to make it more clear.
Sounds fair enough! Thanks for the edit and clarification
I do agree with you that it is very hard to find someone to relate to you and your stories (and you are doing better than me!! When I was in my first 2/3 years travelling, I would simply not shut up about my experiences). This is why I go home so often now; I like to be able to relate to my family and their 9-5 work and daily lives and stupid TV shows etc. I definitely felt disconnected my first times going home, but trust me, when you do it a lot (as I said, I’ve been travelling for 7 years) you finally find a balance and there is no frustration when you go home, only joy
I haven’t lived a nomadic life but I have moved from one country to another several times since I was a child its always hard to adjust from a certain way of life into a new one or even an old one.. because some how every moment traveling or experiancing a new culture evolves you into something else.. so coming back to something you moved on from is always shocking then you go into an angery phase then numb phase then just the nod phase and the shoulder shrug.. hope it becomes esier..
I have been away from the states for the past 10 out of 15 years. Coming back is a crazy thing for sure. Yep, I ordered a “regular” size meal and the cup didn’t even fit in the cup holder.
My problem is the short fuse I have for lack of caring when it comes to customer service. It’s a frustrating thing that goes away after a while.
Very interesting reflection and observations of the reaction you get when you are telling about your adventures. I have not been away as long in time as you, but have been traveling quite a lot but can’t remember the same reactions. Can it have something to do with that American’s normally don’t travel that much, not for that long and not that much out of the country? Like you say; Kind of and envy reaction.
I hope you won’t stop traveling and maybe visit me in Norway to experience midsummer with 19 hours daylight in June
It’s just past 11:30PM now and still light.
Great post Matt. I have heard many a returning traveler express the same sentiments. Good job we’re still a long way from heading home!!
Wow, Matt. Really well said! You totally just put into words what’s been on my mind since I came back from living in Japan a month and a half ago. It’s my fourth time coming back from extended periods abroad, and I just wanted to bring up the point that the reverse culture shock gets a little less each time. This last time, I barely noticed it. I think that if you spend enough time away from your home culture (for me, the turning point was two years) then you just completely stop identifying with it. Returning to the states felt famliar, but it certainly wasn’t ‘home’ anymore, but I wasn’t bothered by it because I try to think of it in terms the bigger picture – the whole world is my home.
Anyways, I think “unstimulating” is a really good way to describe it.
I lived in China and visited home just once in the 3.5 years. I move there right out of college. Coming back was really difficult. It gets easier — in most ways. I can relate.
However, I still feel like years of my life vanished. I returned home and my friends are married, settled in careers and buying houses. I’m just starting out again (with the poor timing of the recession) and feel like I just graduated college. I missed out on 3.5 years of pop culture and US news. And I’m still saying: “Oh. I never heard that. It must have happened when I was gone.”
People are interested in my time away — but only in sound bites. It’s hard for them to relate. They like to hear about the food or the spitting or the bicycles or those other quirky vignettes that you get in the newspaper.
After time, you get a job and a life here. You stop talking about overseas. And it’s almost like it never happened. It’s strange.
I am very out of touch with most of the pop culture references people keep making!
too true – and you KNOW i’ve studied this, in depth (as well as experienced it). reverse culture shock eventually lessens, but i think that is just you becoming used to it.
that said, i do think it makes you want to go back abroad a bit sooner.
the more you travel and adapt to different cultures, the more you adapt into a cultural marginal – that is, someone who can find a home anywhere.
How very true Matt. Even just talking to friends and family via Skype and email, I struggle to explain to them how my life is abroad. How do you express to someone who’s never spent a long time out of their home country what it’s like to live abroad or travel long term? It’s nearly impossible to relate. And yes, they always want the quick and easy answer. Unfortunately it’s not easy.
Really, how do you summarize a life living abroad or traveling the world? How do you condense it into just a few short sentences? Is it even possible?
No, it’s like asking how to do you summarize your whole life!
Travel isn’t for all (and occurs in differing styles) and most of my friends on my return of my longest overseas jaunt had also achieved many important and impressive things (whether that be having/raising children, obtaining a degree, buying a house, learning to kayak, volunteering for something they are passionate about or any number of life goals for them). Their stories and times were entertaining and important for them as much as any tales that I may have had. Time can make people grow somewhat apart as they pursue their directions and desires in life. You and I and many of your readers enjoy travel but I think we need to be careful to negatively contrast others’ life plans with seeing stupendous waterfalls, wild animals, historic castles, dazzling city skylines, eating strange foods, walking cobbled laneways or whatever.
Not sure if you disagree.
My friend’s have their own adventures but many of them end up in the typical american box and with some of them, i can see they want to escape but, like they say in the matix, not everyone is ready to be unplugged.
As I told benny, my point here is to say being home is a shock and talk about how people can’t relate to that shock.
I find the biggest culture shock of coming home are Pedestrian Crossings – cars actually stop! For most destinations that I venture to, zebra crossings are there for decoration only. Stopping is optional.
I’ve been on both ends of this. I think the bottom line is that if you barrage someone with stories about your life for the past year for longer than 5 minutes, not matter WHAT you’ve been doing, they’re gonna get bored. Matt your eyes probably glaze over too when they start telling them what they’ve been up to. Maybe they’re jealous, maybe not, but ultimately I think people just prefer talking to listening.
Franny, I love seeing you comment on the site! When we get together, you can listen! I know you will
OH and PS – my reverse culture shock is always awful and I get depressed for like 2 months. After my longest trip away I read Bill Bryson “I am a Stranger Here Myself” (a whole collected of essays he wrote after living in England for 20 years and then coming back to the US and experiencing reverse culture shock) – it made me at least feel less alone in what I was going through.
We went through some of the same reactions when we visited our family and friends in the States over the holidays. Meals are huge, you can’t walk anywhere, everyone is screaming on TV and everyone asks superlative questions (what was your best xxx? what was your worst xxx?), but then gets bored if you go on for more than 2 minutes.
I thought you were just visiting home for a short while, but if you’ve returned (i.e., you don’t expect to return to Asia or somewhere else soon) then that’s a double whammy. It’s not just reverse culture shock, it’s lifestyle change.
I’m just home for a short visit, so it isn’t so bad. It’s not a lifestyle change just yet! I head to Europe to live out of my backpack again August 23rd!
Oh good I was concerned that you had given it all up and become “normal”! Yeah a short trip “home” is OK but…. What I find now after years of doing this is that for no one place is home – my partner’s nearest relatives all still live in NZ but mine don’t and just because we own property,car and a storage unit of junk there it doesn’t make it home as far as I am concerned.
Lissie
Oh yes, I so know that glazed eyes look…. but I’ll never ever understand it!!!!! I have to accept it though, so this have sometimes made me shut my mouth about our trips. They don’t want to hear it anyway. Such a pity.
One funny thing that I forgot to mention earlier. Australia drives/walks etc on the left. If travelling to North America or mainkland Europe, you quickly get into the habit of looking the other way when crossing the road and even walking on the other side of the pavement. It is a shock to get back home to be walking into people or nearly being decked by cars when checking the road the wrong way.
I don’t have any problems these days when I head home, but I do remmeber the first few times and all of those experiences ring true for me as well. I’m heading home for most of August and am actually looking 100% forward to it which might be the first time that’s happened. I think I’m starting to appreciate time spent with family and friends a bit more than perhaps I used to. It’s also a lot easier to head home knowing that I’ll be heading off on more travels a few weeks later.
Good point. I do enjoy coming home to see my friends but then again, being home reminds me how much I like being away.
Hi Matt! I’ve never made long journeys, but I used to be always in a journey… So, the feeling of coming home was a bit weird… What was home? Now, I’m stuck, and that is truly shocking!!
Blogtrotter is showing some sights of the most northern capital city in the world. Enjoy and have a great weekend!
First off, welcome home, Matt! I’ve never traveled long enough to feel that sort of “re-entry” feeling that you seem to have, but it totally makes sense to me. What you describe as reaction from family and friends to talking about your travels is common to everyone who has any kind of passion in life that isn’t shared by those around them. If you can get someone to listen to you gush about your passion for longer than 2 minutes, it’s a victory. But I do the same thing when people start going on and on about reality shows. I don’t watch them and I don’t care about them, so I glaze over. Thank God for the Internet, where we can connect with people who share our passions and obsess about them as much we do.
I finally booked my flight home for July 17, so it looks like I’m about to relate to this post first hand in a few weeks. I fully expect it to be surreal, and am already plotting my strategy to be able to take off again.
The topic of long term travel reminds me of the Newton’s law “an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest.”
I too am already plotting my escape!
I totally agree Matt. I actually slept on the floor, next to my bed, in my childhood room after a trip because it just felt too…odd to be back.
That’s hardcore!
“When you talk to another traveler though, you don’t need words. They just understand” Absolutely. So when and where are you plotting your escape next?
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So true Matt. I popped home for a wedding for the 1st time in almost two years not long ago. I found it a bit of a weird paradox. On the one hand, it really felt like time had stood still in my absence and nothing had changed, people were still doing the same thing etc.
However, at the same time, people had moved on, found new friends, partners etc and so had new parts of their lives of which I had no involvement – which made me fee quite detached at times.
Amen. Well stated. I returned from 4 months in Rome to live in the fast paced, heart wrenching world of NYC and the difference between those two worlds was indeed shocking and I felt very alone in my feelings!!!
as I tend to return to Italy again soon.
Now I know what to expect
Amen to your blog.
Cheers mate!
I just came back almost a month ago from a 6-month trip and it’s surreal as what you have mentioned in your blog. I’m glad to know, that a lot of people feels the same way. When I came home, I can’t understand what I’m feeling. I don’t want to talk to my friends and family, well I tried to but it seems that something has changed but I don’t know what. Maybe it’s me…
The stories that I shared with them is incomparable to the actual magic that I felt during my travels…. feelings just can’t be verbalized…
Anyway, keep on writing man…
PS–I saw “A Map for Saturday” about 2 years ago. Great film. Plus i had lunch with the filmmaker, Brook, about a year ago in NYC. Great guy.
This is exactly how I felt when I came back from studying abroad in Australia in 2003, and then again how I felt after coming back from teaching English in Prague earlier this year. The hardest thing to deal with is that most people, after asking briefly how your experience was, don’t really care to hear much more. You feel so different, and yet the only people who really understand the difference are those that were there with you.
Great blog – keep it up