2008 Woodie Awards
Back from Brazil; back in the U.S.
By: Erin Wicks
Issue date: 10/9/07 Section: Opinion
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Disembarking from the plane in Chicago, everything seemed foreign. The harsh, confusing clutter of English-speaking voices, the Starbuck's sign advertising everything in American dollars, the masses of people wearing brands like Abercrombie and Fitch - it was all overwhelming.
You would think that I am an alien. Actually, I have finally reached my home country. I am an alien no longer. Is it possible to have culture shock in a country where you lived for the first 18 years of your life?
When I went to live in Brazil for a year with Rotary Youth Exchange I was told that the hardest part would be returning home. That did not prepare me, however, for the shocking way in which everything in America was now strangely familiar and disturbingly foreign.
I worked so hard in Brazil to create a new life and leave America behind.
As an agnostic, I had a hard time connecting with my host family, whose lives were centered around their Mormon religion. When I came home from school to find missionaries sitting in the living room ready to convert me, I freaked. I refused to go to church with them even though it was their family bonding ritual, and I never participated in conversations involving religion. Like many Americans, one of my fundamental values was my freedom of religion and I felt they had violated that.
Four months into my exchange I still felt like a stranger in their home. I reexamined the situation and realized that I was disrespecting their values by not even trying to understand them. I didn't have to believe in God, but I could still attend church with an open mind and show some respect to the people who had given me so much. Immediately our relationship improved.
I had nearly forgotten my life in America and now I was returning with a stranger's eyes and a sense of displacement. It was terrifying to find my old life waiting, exactly the same, when I was so different. Used to staying out in the streets of a large city all day and all night in Brazil, I felt childish when my parents in the States tried to set a curfew and made me call them. I had discovered freedom and I loved being independent. No one seemed to recognize or care about the new person I had become. I felt as out of place in my own home as I ever had in Brazil.
You would think that I am an alien. Actually, I have finally reached my home country. I am an alien no longer. Is it possible to have culture shock in a country where you lived for the first 18 years of your life?
When I went to live in Brazil for a year with Rotary Youth Exchange I was told that the hardest part would be returning home. That did not prepare me, however, for the shocking way in which everything in America was now strangely familiar and disturbingly foreign.
I worked so hard in Brazil to create a new life and leave America behind.
As an agnostic, I had a hard time connecting with my host family, whose lives were centered around their Mormon religion. When I came home from school to find missionaries sitting in the living room ready to convert me, I freaked. I refused to go to church with them even though it was their family bonding ritual, and I never participated in conversations involving religion. Like many Americans, one of my fundamental values was my freedom of religion and I felt they had violated that.
Four months into my exchange I still felt like a stranger in their home. I reexamined the situation and realized that I was disrespecting their values by not even trying to understand them. I didn't have to believe in God, but I could still attend church with an open mind and show some respect to the people who had given me so much. Immediately our relationship improved.
I had nearly forgotten my life in America and now I was returning with a stranger's eyes and a sense of displacement. It was terrifying to find my old life waiting, exactly the same, when I was so different. Used to staying out in the streets of a large city all day and all night in Brazil, I felt childish when my parents in the States tried to set a curfew and made me call them. I had discovered freedom and I loved being independent. No one seemed to recognize or care about the new person I had become. I felt as out of place in my own home as I ever had in Brazil.
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