Tamales! This and the rest are from the lovely Pueblito de Los Dominicos, a market hosting incredible artisans and handicrafts.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve experienced a few symptoms of Culture Shock. Rest assured! I don’t share the following stages in a homesick kind of way, but just to detail the emotional alignment and re-alignment required when adjusting to a new land.

I studied Culture Shock last year in Faith Adiele‘s graduate Women’s Travel Writing class at Mills College. While we discussed it, theorized it, observed it across various types of travel narrative, it wasn’t until I landed in Chile and went flipping back through my class notes that I realized I had but one scant page that actually broke down the pure process, step-by-step. In my memory, it loomed large over the class and even larger once I landed here. First-hand experience has since made up for the brevity in paper evidence–I’ve dogeared and referenced it often over the past two months in an effort to place myself amongst, at, or between these four main stages:

Cortados are the best! The honeymoon with these should likely last as long as we’re here. We drank them down so fast I don’t even have a “before” shot to share.

1. Honeymoon! “We’ll always be newlyweds,” my sweet husband said the other night when asked how this, our first year of marriage, was fairing. In love, that’s a beautiful ambition. In Culture Shock, it might wear off quick! As is a given with each of these steps, the reaction/length/manifestation is entirely personal (and supposedly proportionate to your intended length of stay). However long your honeymoon phases lasts, it’s unmistakeable… that awe we feel when we step off a plane/boat/train and take in a brand new landscape, climate, terrain, people, language. That awe can be nothing short of invigorating as we move around in the new culture and meet surely what must be the most fascinating people on the planet, who we are so fortunate to have guiding us along as we take in the shiny newness of it all. For me, that’s been flying in over the Andes at sunrise, discovering bohemian havens like Bellavista and Bellas Artes with new friends, or merely walking around my apartment, knowing its our first home together.

2. Shock! And, then, right as you’re loving the neighborhood, you figure out you’re completely lost, are following a janky map, don’t have a phone, and don’t know the language. However it manifests, the point here is that you’re frustrated with how things work (i.e. how they work completely differently than most everything back home), which may lead you to criticize, mock, and withdraw yourself from all those fascinating people you just met. I’m pretty sure I have to equate those first two weeks in country to unadulterated shock, when getting out of bed pre-10AM required herculean strength, and 72-hour stretches may or may not have gone by without my leaving the apartment.

This was back in December. Wonder if I will ever adjust to summertime Christmas.

3. Negotiation/Adjustment! Okay, you say. I will figure my way around. I will get a phone once and for all. I will develop a daily routine that involves a diameter of at least three subway stops away from the apartment. I will study for this TEFL class and make friends and I’ll come home and tell my husband about my day, which will not involve pacing the apartment or going grocery shopping, as that no longer counts as “an adventure.” In other words, it’s time to venture back out there, regain your sense of humor, learn the language (though I am still very much in all ways working on that one).

4. Integration! This is way beyond regaining your sense of humor. Now we’re talking about regaining your whole dang personality and enthusiasm and even taking on some behaviors of the new culture. Faith told us this was a healthier stage than choosing one culture over the other. And this is what I will continue to aim for… a smooth navigation between California and Chile.

I mean, you didn’t really think I had personal examples for No. 4 yet, did you?! Instead, you can picture me navigating a feedback loop, circling back through equal parts honeymoon-shock-negotiation on sometimes an hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly basis. It all depends on how lost I am, how much I can understand of the language, or whether or not it’s an acceptable time for a Pisco Sour.

These certainly aren’t the only four words to describe the traveler’s emotional journey, as Culture Shock is known by many phrases. For instance, on the final day of my TEFL certification program here in Santiago, our instructor also presented “the five stages of culture shock,” and while synonymous, I think they bare repeating for some differences in tone:

1. Honeymoon
2. Hostility
3. Depression
4. Adaptation
5. Acceptance

Hostility and Depression?! I sure am glad I spent the first two months chalking it up to “shock and negotiation” instead. Call it what you will, but just try not to be too hard on yourself, as I’ve been known to be now and again over these last 60-some-odd days when I don’t have it all figured out. In other words, when I have far from it all figured out.

Regardless of which synonyms you subscribe to, most versions have an implied final step as well (Reverse Culture Shock), which I’m going to have to report on once I’m back in the States. Stay tuned! For now I’ll leave you with the most precious of cats lapping it up at the tap. We know he at least likes the water! (That’s an example of my negotiating sense of humor. I, too, have, more or less, adjusted to that.)