Making the Transition

9/6/2013

After living in Kuwait, I approached our move to Germany like it was going to be a piece of cake. In almost all ways, its a thousand times better than Kuwait, don't get me wrong. However, as we left Kuwait and the experience got further and further away the rough patches of time there faded in my memory and only the good memories stood out. Rough experiences, including the roller coaster of adjustment that comes along with moving abroad - that I conveniently down played in my mind as I mentally prepared for this move.

While making the Kuwait adjustment, I remember being happy one day, completely occupied the next, depressed the next, and then excited the following. It was a constant up and down and honestly I think it lasted almost the whole time we were there, but the roughest patch was obviously before we made friends.

I found an article yesterday talking about these ups and downs and describes them as the Four Stages of Culture Shock. I thought it was interesting and sort of gives a glimpse into the experience.

I'll adjust and hopefully make friends soon, but the initial transition is hard - no matter what country you're in I think because its not home. I'm over the honeymoon phase of just arriving and now feel a little lost. I don't have a routine, a social group, we live far from town which feels a bit isolating, and our house is still a work in progress - so even that doesn't feel like "home" yet.

We have a trip to Oxford coming up in two weeks that I'm super excited for though. Also, I hope to explore some the next couple of weekends and potentially make some more progress on the house. Baby steps...

As I was looking for pictures to accompany this post, I went back to my old posts from when we had just arrived in Kuwait and thought I'd share:

I remember exactly how the hotel smelled when we first arrived. I remember being trapped in the tiny hotel room while Jason had to work because I felt awkward going into the lobby because everyone started at me (I later got over this). But I also remember how awesome the cappuccinos and the sushi in the hotel was :)

Grocery shopping is always a culture shock. In some ways shopping in Kuwait was easier because the stores were bigger and everything was translated in English. Its not the case here, especially in my little town where no one speaks English. This post was before I found what would actually be my favorite grocery store - Lulu's!