For all those coming back from abroad, I empathize with the experience the Study Abroad Office has labeled "Reverse Culture Shock."
There are serious consequences to our return to American soil. The honeymoon is over, and we have to put down our beer steins and return to our normal lives.
There are many mental and physical ramifications, the most dangerous being the mortal peril we put ourselves in when we bore our friends with countless retellings of "that time in Brussels with the Norwegian nuns."
This time around, when I received a packet from Tufts explaining the effects of "Reverse Culture Shock," I paid a bit more attention to it than to the one explaining mere "Culture Shock." I had laughed back in August, amused by the graph detailing our initial shock and awe, followed by our gradual descent into depression and expatriate angst before actual assimilation occurred. I convinced myself it wouldn't apply to me, that I'd be the one gloriously assimilated student to forego any of the usual perils an abroad student faces.
And indeed, the graph didn't really fit my experience. Instead of elation followed by a period of frustration, I was homesick from the moment I landed in Prague and for some weeks after. Honestly, I was terrified by the first thing I saw: somber gray Communist block housing.
To my jet-lagged, peanut-butter-starved body, there seemed to be no joy in this country. The gray, cloudy skies and people frowning at me in the streets indicated I'd made a horrible mistake. It took all my willpower not to get right back on the plane; everything from the music on the radio to the faucets in the bathroom seemed alien to me.
But I did get over it, eventually, and here I am, unable to shut up about how "amazing" it all was. Because that's what I say when people ask "How was Prague?"
When a 15-second chat takes place with friends I run into in the Campus Center after not seeing them for eight months, there's little else to say and we both just sort of sheepishly smile, knowing there's no good way to sum up what's happened since we last met.
Coming back to the States, I paid more attention to this second little graph from the Study Abroad Office, and realized after my initial elation toward my homecoming, I was starting to see America in a more cynical light. Where are the gorgeous Gothic buildings and river views? Why am I shelling out $20 at the drug store when I had once paid less than $5 for vitamins and cold medicine? And why can I vote and enlist but not enjoy a glass of wine with dinner?
I miss the professors who would join us at pubs and caf?©s in the evenings, discussing everything from the day's lecture to their involvement in the Velvet Revolution. I miss the honor system on the city's subway, and how I could elicit a smile from a Metro guard by using my best Czech. I miss the outrageous claims made by every caf?© and pub that "Kafka ate here," even though the house special - pork knee - would not have suited his vegetarian palate.
I'm often asked if I'm going back. I usually don't know what to say to that - a trip to Eastern Europe for anything longer than a week would be tough with work and school. But anything shorter than a week seems too little, like when you visit home for a weekend during freshman year and feel displaced and foreign because your things are back at school. Of course some day I'd like to go back, spending a summer teaching English in Brno or writing travel diaries in the Czech countryside. But when?
And then there's the matter of a semester versus a year. Is one semester enough? Of course not - that's like asking if four years at Tufts is "enough," or if your potential for absorbing new information is going to stop the moment you take hold of your diploma.
I can always go back, always travel more. It's a tough decision, but mine was made by my major and minor - I just couldn't get the credits I wanted from the programs I was interested in and taking a year off didn't seem right. Plus, being thrown in a new city helped me find new ways to milk a city for all it's worth, and I'm seeing opportunities in Boston I'd never thought of before. Maybe I'm just rationalizing the decision because, after all, I'll never know what the "right" thing to do was.
So what's a reverse culture-shocked junior to do? I try not to answer my cell phone with cau anymore, though I do greet the friends I had in Prague with Jak se mas. I keep Mucha posters on my walls, but I'm letting myself get excited about a trip to Central America, and realizing, slowly, that there is life after Prague.
Kate Peck is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Katherine.Peck@tufts.edu
