Sounding the depths

Within the last month or two, strange things have been going on amongst the gringas nearest and dearest to my heart. Some invisible wave of dysfunction is sweeping the cerros. One friend managed to break all of her electronics, and took to random crying fits during nights out on the town. Another announced to me one day that she wanted to open a restaurant in Chile, only to follow this up the next day with the declaration that she intended to leave her boyfriend and move back home--immediately. A third signed up for any activity that seemed vaguely interesting, nearly bought a puppy, and would regularly inform me pleasantly at our meet ups that she'd spent the majority of the preceding day bawling her eyes out.

As for me, well, the list is long. I've developed a habit of spending 3 hours cooking dinner instead of planning a lesson. I've been periodically bed-ridden with severe anxiety over just about anything I can set my mind on. The few belongings that I have in Chile have somehow managed to spread themselves over increasingly large surfaces and in increasingly disorderly ways. I've been coming down with random illnesses and staying up until 5 in the morning more often than not. I've scoured the kitchen and bathroom top to bottom at 3am. My iPod has been stuck on Tegan & Sara--an angst injection if ever there was one. I've embarassed myself at parties by becoming irritated too quickly. I've become sensitive to the point that if someone gives off the slightest vibe of condescension towards me or my Spanish, it's enough to ruin my night. None of the batteries to any of my various electronics are ever charged. My cell phone never has credit. I watched Amadeus the other night (at 3am) and took from it the moral that if Mozart could die insane and unrecognized, it's probably pretty much a sure thing for hit-or-miss EFL teachers. At the moment, I have been accidentally locked into a friend's house with no working telephone (but not to worry, help is on the way)....and instead of appreciating the humor of the situation I have passed the last hour kicking the door and screaming insults into the empty apartment.

What the hell is going on in the Valparaíso outpost of Gringolandia?

If you've lived or studied abroad, you are undoubtedly familiar with this graphic:


Yes, we're talking about culture shock. The conventional wisdom on the topic is illustrated above, showing four stages. In the first stage, the "honeymoon," the new arrival adores every crack in the sidewalk in their new home. In the second, which has many names but is usually simply referred to ominously as Phase 2, the culture shock victim hates the world or, more specifically, the part of it in which they have landed. People here look funny, talk funny, think funny, and everything they do is wrong and unintelligent, the visitor muses. The third stage, the "adjustment" stage, is the process wherein the person thinks, "Gee whiz, I suppose I should be more open-minded and accept that there are good and bad things in both cultures!" And then, ta-dah, our happy global citizen arrives at the much coveted rank of bicultural--stage 4.

This theory is thrown at every North American who wants to leave the country. It's all over the internet. It's in any handbook available at any university Study Abroad office. Somehow, though, in the process of spreading the word about culture shock, we have watered down the concept to the point where it has very little relationship to the actual experience. The actual phenomenon of culture shock is a profound, volatile, and extremely personal experience.

I don't debate the basic foundations of the culture shock theory. All of those occurances do happen at some point within the living abroad experience. It is the lack of complexity that irritates.

For example, I and the people mentioned in the first paragraph arrived in Chile for very diverse reasons, and we lead very different lives here. The thing we have in common, other than the fact that they are my fabulous friends, is that we all stumbled through customs in the Santiago airport approximately nine months ago.

It's far too late for stage 2. I know I at least have seen that attitude come and go ages ago. It was a bit of a low spot, but it was no disaster. The meat of it was: hey, this city's great, but these people can be really annoying. It culminated with a midnight tea drinking session with a long-departed fellow expat in which I declared passionately, "I just don't see how it's possible to work with these people, let alone have relationships with them!"

Don't hate-mail me. I got over it. Chileans are just fine.

This crash that my friends and I are living is not on the clean graph of culture shock, but it is happening with such universality that I can't fail to attribute it to that source. However, if you were to speak to each of us independently about our current discontent, you would probably not make the same connection.

Fact of the matter is, culture shock as a general phenomenon often has very little connection to actual cultural interaction. No one is hating Chile right now. We have our gripes, which we can sometimes overindulge, but at the heart of it no one is roaring on that this is a bad country with bad people. In my case, I'm still very much taken with my city, and completely fascinated by the culture of the people.

The problem is not the difference between the two cultures. This new stage is characterized, in fact, by reaching a level of comfort with the culture. Living here is no longer enough of a challenge to keep my mind fully satisfied. It's certainly still a challenge--stress levels are high. The problem is, it's passed from being a Rubics-cube to being a 1000 piece puzzle of an insipid photograph, if you follow me. It's a drudgery type of challenge. As a result, I--and my fellow culture shock victims--are casting around for something to add to our lives that will give us that essential feeling of learning, of progress.

Trouble is, that's a very complicated thing to do. Living in Chile is limiting for us. Teaching English is the main source of income. This is troublesome for me, as I've found that deliniating grammar points leaves me pretty cold. Even for those who enjoy the teaching, however, it is a frustration. There is no advancement for an EFL teacher living abroad. We will never be promoted or assigned more responsibility. I consider myself quite lucky at the moment to be designing a curriculum for my work in the coming year. The same problem holds for the other work available to English speakers, particularly here on the coast where more varied possibilities are scarce. Copy writing, my other work, is similarly repetitive and also holds little possibility for progression.

There are other ways of feeling successful, yes. Volunteering is a good example. However, unless you find a particularly great volunteer position, you often encounter the same set backs. Whether it's due to language difficulties, a looming departure date, or simply stereotyping, very few organizations seem willing to allow foreigners to move up the ranks.

The thing is, as has been written in sources that I am failing to locate at the moment, people who move abroad tend to fit a certain profile. Part of that profile is a high level of success at home. True, we may be nomadic and jump from job to job, a model I exemplify. Or we may be steady risers. In either case, however, we tend to succeed at whatever we put our mind to. We do well in university. We earn the praise of our superiors at work. We put in place innovations and they work. It's all of this luck and skill that in the end makes us feel capable of uprooting ourselves in the first place.

Then we find ourselves failing.

It doesn't matter who you are; living abroad you most likely will find yourself failing at something. I have failed to live up to my standards as a teacher. A friend of mine feels she has failed at learning enough Spanish. Trust me, once you start looking, there are about a million different things that one can fail at. At home, if I feel inadequate in something, I change it. Here, I am not afforded that option. I want to stay in Valparaíso, therefore it is imperative that I continue working at jobs that do not satisfy me. To put some icing on it, all of that success that I've enjoyed means very little here. My bosses are not showering me with praise. My attempts at innovation are received indifferently. People I meet here are not impressed by my experiences as a world-wanderer: more often than not, they act as though anything that has happened to me pre-Chile simply has no bearing on the present moment.

This is not limited to me, or to Chile. Think about that taxi driver that you had in New York or Boston or Philadelphia who had been an engineer or a doctor in some far off country that you may or may not have heard of. Think about how surprised you were, and how you probably mentioned it to the next person you ran into. The world over, foreigners often find that their hard won achievements didn't make it through customs.

This is why the descriptions of culture shock that give a little more depth list symptoms such as:

• a feeling of sadness and loneliness,
• an overconcern about your health,
• headaches, pains, and allergies
• insomnia or sleeping too much
• feelings of anger, depression, vulnerability
• idealizing your own culture
• trying too hard to adapt by becoming obsessed with the new culture
• the smallest problems seem overwhelming
• feeling shy or insecure
• become obsessed with cleanliness
• overwhelming sense of homesickness
• feeling lost or confused
• questioning your decision to move to this place

(This list taken from about.com, but also available in many other sources).

Some of these are conventional wisdom: sadness, loneliness, criticising the local culture, etc. Some of these, however, show the real psychological depth of the crisis: obsessions with cleanliness and health, developing actual physical reactions such as allergies or headaches, sleep disturbances, and actual depression. This is no "keep your sense of humor and you'll be fine" brochure. This is a life crisis of the first degree.

So what's the solution? I believe that this varies. I am putting all of my energy into my writing these days (no, not just this blog) in the hopes that even if nothing makes it into print I will at least have improved my skills. I am focusing on Spanish and trying to stop myself frequently to remind myself that nine months ago I spoke nothing of this language, but yesterday I engaged in a full-fledged discussion of philosophy. I am crossing my fingers till they turn white that working with small children will give me a greater sense of satisfaction than working with teenagers. Another friend has decided to make use of her masters program's online courses to continue working towards her degree from afar. Still another has taken the LSAT and is applying to law school.

In the past, I've known people who hit what I now know to be this wall of a crisis. They went home, and I think that that can also be a valid decision. Sometimes this is just too much to deal with, and it's entirely reasonable to take the incredible experience you've had and take it home with you where you can put it to use. In the case of my friends and I, however, no one's leaving. We're scrambling up this gravel slope in the pursuit of different goals, but we have in common the fact that we are sticking it out.

I can't surmise what may be the outcomes of this particular crisis, but I do know that what we will gain from this is far more than just the ability to stick it out in Chile. Maybe I'll learn how to cope with failure, or how to work through mediocre jobs. Maybe I'll figure out how to seek satisfaction outside my work. Maybe I'll figure out how to find a meaningful career. Who knows. All I know is that once I emerge from this heavy time, I'll be much richer for it. I'm just hoping I don't break any doors in the process.