Letters to the Editor
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It's exhausting!
I just entered my fourth year in France. I'm not 20 years old (by a long shot!) but what struck me about your letter was your coming home every night and watching TV. I did that too. A lot. And I talked to my friends and family in the States almost every night. I wasn't homesick, just really, really tired. It's exhausting to move to another country. Give yourself a break. It's ok to be overwhelmed. I used to come home and sleep, get up, eat something and sleep again. And, you're going to school!
I don't know where you are, but it's winter now. I moved here at the end of January. Most people are at home in the evenings, doing, guess what? watching TV! Don't be so hard on yourself. Spring is coming! People will start venturing out and if you bump into them, as soon as you open your mouth they'll know you're not a native. They'll strike up the conversation. Trust me, it'll get better.
Try to pick one thing to do once a week, and stick to it. Go to a cafe, get a coffee and read the paper. Once you show up a couple of times, get the feel for what you're doing, where you're at, you'll relax and start looking around. Someone will meet your eyes, smile and... ;)
Good luck letter writer. Sometimes it just takes a while. Don't be so hard on yourself.
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Grr, “Europe”!
Call me a grumpy foreigner, but why is it Americans seem to lump the 15-odd countries and half-billion people of Europe under one catch-all name? It’s a very large continent, not a single homogenous city-state! If a foreign student wrote this letter from the US, wouldn’t your first question be, “Yeah, but are you in New York or New Mexico?” I’m sure we readers could be a bit more helpful if we knew which town or city or even country the writer was living in. Okay, rant over. Back to the TV.
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Dirty Little Secret
C'mon, you can admit it to me, there's no one else here... you expected "the Europeans" to be fascinated by your American-ness, and falling over themselves to be your "friend", didn't you?!
And so now you feel a little bit foolish about that expectation. It burns you every time you go outside and are roundly ignored -- exactly as you would be in any city in the US of A.
And so you don't want to feel that uncomfortable feeling, and so you hide yourself away, feeling -- unreasonably now that you know it was a silly expectation -- judged and found "boring" by your host culture.
Know what? The dirty little secret is that you ARE boring. Exactly as boring as you were at home. Except at home, miracle of miracles, you had people who actually liked you!
Why did they like you? Because you had shared experiences, and a shared culture to filter those experiences with. It's as simple as that. This is the key to everything.
The single and only way to have people "like you" -- and to start to have the kind of fun you wanted when you signed up for this -- is to do all the painfully hard work of having shared experiences with people in this new culture.
There's no shortcut. Simply "being American" is, as ever, not enough. It's OK that you thought it was. It's a rookie mistake, but a common one. People make that mistake in _both_ directions...
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be proactive
Just because you're the kind of person who generally has her life together does not mean you're immune from culture shock. It's real, and it affects us in ways we're not always aware of. Read up on culture shock and understand your experience with that knowledge in mind.
That said, making new friends in a new environment, even putting all the cross-cultural and linguistic issues aside, can be a challenge. You don't want to go all the way to another country just to hang out with people from where you're from, right? So the easiest social group - the other students in your program - is a limiting way to go. But breaking the ice with locals is tough. Most people living in their own home town already have a group of friends and aren't on the lookout for new ones while walking down the street (this goes for moving to a new city in your own country too). So it's not just you. You're in a difficult position.
Here are some concrete ideas:
- join a club or organization. Give yourself a context for interacting with people. This could be a sports team, a group that volunteers in the community, a religious group, an interest group (hiking, photography, etc). If you're studying at a university, there should be lots of groups like this. Otherwise, look online (at the craiglist or meetup or equivalent in your country), look at community center bulletin boards, etc.
- do a language exchange. If you're studying a foreign language, set up an exchange where you trade English for your partner's language. It can just be a casual thing at a coffee shop once a week, but it will give you an "in" with a local who can lead you to more people or give you ideas for where to hang out.
- tap into the art/music/theater scene. pick up the local paper and see what performances, gallery openings, plays, concerts, etc are going on. Go to a bunch of them and strike up conversations with people. This will help you meet people and help you feel like you're experiencing the local culture.
- explore a different neighborhood every weekend. pick a metro stop or district in the guidebook (you have a guidebook for your city, right? use it til it's dog-eared). You will eventually find people or areas that are a fit for you.
- use the internet as a tool for enriching real life. there are communities and message boards for ex-pats in every country in the world online. find yours and read about what other people are doing and ask for help with your problems.
- if you're finding the locals really hard to break the ice with, that's ok. You can still have a fulfilling international experience by interacting with foreign students from countries all over the world. If you're all studying the same foreign language, you can bond over that. Other outsiders might be much more receptive to newcomers because they know what it's like to be one.
- talk to your adviser at the program you're at now, and also your adviser and the study abroad office at your university back home. tell them you're looking for ways to get more involved in your city, and to get out more. you are not the first student who's had these issues, so I am sure they can give you ideas from past experience. they are there to help you, so use them.
And while you are doing these things, keep a journal. Write down the things you notice, new words you learn, cultural tidbits, your feelings, anything. This will help with culture shock, and when you look back over it down the road, it will show you how much you really did experience and learn so you won't be able to feel like you're wasting time.
Good luck!