Blue Sky & Orange Soda

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” ~Scott Peck

Feb 20, 2013
Last fall, after being accepted to study abroad, I had to go through extensive training at the university on “Culture Shock.” They explained that this was the natural series of emotions that everyone experiences on a semester abroad, and it essentially is why you study abroad. The lessons you learn from and the ways you deal with Culture Shock are essentially what you get out of the whole experience.

Anthropologists and psychologists identify five phases of culture shock: Honeymoon, frustration, acceptance, bicultural, and reversal. In Honeymoon, everything is exciting and new. This is how vacation feels; travelers want to do everything and fear there isn’t enough time. Frustration is a phase that usually won’t be reached on vacation. It is a phase where the nuances of the new environment start to become annoying. The reality that life here is different from life back home sets in and everything suddenly feels hard. Acceptance is when these frustrating things are no longer frustrating. Life just “is what it is” (for lack of better expression) and the routine becomes less cumbersome and more familiar. The Bicultural phase is when not only are the nuances not frustrating, but they make sense and feel comfortable. Reversal, of course, being the last phase, is the trip back home when the original culture now feels new again.

I would suspect that today, I hit the frustration phase.

The alarm blared, just as I knew it would. Five hours of sleep was not going to get me very far. I was exhausted. If I went to the club again, I was going to have to leave a lot earlier to pull this Wednesday morning class off.

Skipping breakfast, I got dressed and headed to the tram. I rode it to school and found the classroom without problem. This class was also in the Paradise Building and looked very much like the modern classrooms back home. It even had the annoying chairs that pivot away from the desks—everyone hates them here just as much here as we do in the States.

As I sat in a zombie-like stupor, waiting for class to start, a German girl came over and sat down next to me. “You’re in my marketing class, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I am,” I said recognizing her from the little ice breaking game yesterday.

“Karen,” she said reaching out her hand.

"I’m Zach,” I said.

"I actually came over to ask you about that bad mitten team you are putting together,” she said.

I laughed. “You have me mixed up with someone else. I don’t play bad mitten,” I said. “At least, not very well.”

“Oh,” she said. “Bummer. I really want to join this team.”

It was hard to focus through the first half of class. The session was 3 hours long, but after 90 minutes, there was a break. I stepped out to buy some breakfast at the café. I don’t know exactly what was in the pastry I bought, but it was covered in caramel so I liked it.

When the class continued I noticed that some of the professor’s advice, while certainly legal, seemed to border on unethical. He certainly had a lot of experience and I was sure these were things he’d learned from being hands-on in the field, but all of my business classes back home had thus far emphasized not cutting corners or hurting the company. He suggested we back up company data on our home computers in case we ever get fired so we can take the data elsewhere.

Again, I was still groggy from the night before, so when the class was over, I decided to go back to the dorm. Before I left though, I went to pay my room and board.

I sat down with the banker, the same blonde woman who had helped me before. I gave her my contract and the cash. She counted it and said, “Sorry. Not enough.”

Oh shoot! I’d been so tired I forgot that I was still 3000 short.

“I’m sorry,” I said gathering my things. “I’ll go to the ATM and be right back.”

“No,” she said. “We closed now.”

Closed! It was only 11:30! “What time do you re-open.”

She thought for a minute and grabbed a piece of paper. She wrote 13:30. Ok, so in two hours.

I thanked her and stepped outside. I waited for a girl to finish at the ATM. When she did I stepped up to the machine and put in my card. Another girl started yelling at me in Czech. I gather it was fairly vulgar because it caught the attention of several people walking by. That was when I realized there was a line.

It cracked me up a little. Ever since I’d landed in London, I had been in line for things only to get cut off and learn I wasn’t in line. Now, I hadn’t thought there was a line and, sure enough, there was one! I found it ironic, but also frustrating. It was a small reminder that things were different here.

After getting my money, I went back to the dorms. As I rode along, I began thinking, this is exhausting. Playing tourist had been fun; trying to blend in as a local had been fun; now actually living like a local and navigating a day to day routine was totally beating me down.

Homesick wasn’t the right word for how I felt (although right now, the remaining 111 days do feel like an awfully long time.) I didn’t want to go home. I just felt like I wanted a day off; a day where everyone speaks English and everyone does things the way I’m used to them. I know that defeats the purpose of being abroad, but it would make things easier.

I was sure that part of the reason I felt this way was because I was tired. I had four hours between my classes so I collapsed into bed for a nap. Before I drifted off, I thought back to being Lodge Chief for the Boy Scouts. I’d done that gig for a year and there were certainly times that I felt like I did now. There were times that I would have loved to just turn it off for a day and not deal with problems. A song that my team and I had listened to a few times for motivation was “Son of Man” by Phil Collins from the Disney movie Tarzan. As I drifted off to my nap, I grabbed my iPod, and put on the song.

When my alarm went off to wake me up for the afternoon, I felt even more tired than when I went to sleep. Naps are the worst that way! I gathered my things, checked that I had enough money for the bank, and went out to the tram.

As I walked outside, I saw something that totally lit up my day. The sky overhead—the sky that had been raining in London and overcast ever since I landed in Prague—the sky was now a sunny shade of blue!

It was the first blue sky I’d seen in twelve days. I had no idea the weather could make such an impact on mood, but it totally turned mine around. I got on the tram and for the entire ride to school stared at the brilliant sunshine.

By the time I got to school, clouds were rolling back in and my mood started to fade again. I realized that I was hungry. There was a small pizza place around the corner from school that sold slices for 25 crowns. I stopped by the window and bought a piece of pepperoni. Walking back to the school building I leaned on the window sill to eat in.

In that moment, I felt totally homeless. I was tired of cooking. I was tired of worrying about having enough money or enough food. I was tired of not being able to understand conversations around me. I was tired of missing blue sky.

When I finished the pizza, I went inside and back to the bank. The blonde banker was gone but the other one called me over. She was a lot younger but didn’t seem to know as much English. I gave her my contract and she started punching numbers into the computer. As she did, I double counted my money to make sure I had enough. Watching her face, she seemed puzzled by whatever showed up on the screen. She tried a few times but each time got the same confusing popup on her screen.

I felt like I was going to lose it. She wasn’t saying anything, but I just knew this wasn’t going well. Then, she turned to me and said, “Your money.”

I handed her the bills. She ran them through a machine that counted them and handed me back some change along with a form. “Your signature here.” I signed it. “Thank you.” She said. “All done.”

All done? All done! ALL DONE!!!

It had worked! I’d paid the bill! I had enough money; it was all taken care of. It was over. I know it was just a bill but it felt like such a small victory! I emailed my parented from my ipod to let them know, and went to class feeling completely re-energized. Out of the window, I caught a glimpse of blue sky. I took a photo of it, just in case I had to wait 12 more days to see it again.

The class, which was on international marketing, was very interesting and the professor used a lot of funny international examples. By the time class ended, it was snowing again. I made my way back to the tram and back to the dorm. I emailed with my Mom a little and explained how I felt. I really wasn’t homesick, but I was definitely not in the honeymoon any more.

As I cooked pasta, I realized this was a good thing. The other exchange students didn’t seem to feel the same way, but they were also congregating with people from their home countries. I was really trying to push myself to hang out with locals and have this great cultural experience. Frustration was just a normal part of it. The fact I’d hit it so early might mean that I would get out of it early too.

When my pasta was ready, I decided I would try to get a drink out of the vending machine. I hadn’t had any soda since I left the states and I was just craving something a little sweet. It was a bit of a challenge choosing the right beverage since they sold alcohol in the vending machines and the labels were all in Czech. I picked something that looked like soda and took it back to my room.

Sitting down with my pasta, my laptop, and my drink, I cracked open the can. Taking a sip, sure enough, it was Orange soda. It tasted amazing! Again, it was funny how the simple joy totally turned my mood around. At the same time, I realized that that very revelation was part of the experience. Finding the simple joys—the blue sky, the orange soda—that was the way to combat the frustration. Maybe if we spent more time doing little things that we enjoy in our everyday lives, our routines wouldn’t be as cumbersome and exhausting.

After dinner, I emailed with mom a bit more and then skyped with my friend Bryan. It was great to still feel connected to my family and to laugh with Bryan and hear about life back home.

As I went to bed, I thought again about the song “Son of Man.” It felt like it really fit this experience. The lyrics, which speak of “climbing mountains” and learning “to be wise”, seemed to capture the transformation I was starting to undergo. I’d like to share the song with you to conclude this post. I look forward to continuing on to my next adventure!