Culture Shock!

Whenever I return home from school, I find that I go through some form of reverse culture shock. For winter break, the first shock is generally the cold- while I know perfectly well that Massachusetts is cold in December and January, this is always a fact that I manage to forget about while I am in California or, this year, Greece. Since I usually leave home in August and come back in December, there is always that moment of surprise when I realize that I have gone from lush, green, warm New England summer to the arctic tundra that is home in December. There's usually that first moment when, after having gotten off the plane and collected my luggage, I step outside and think, "Oh dear, this is very cold."

Of course, the shock isn't just about the weather, and this year, it's a bit more severe than usual. I don't usually have a hard time adjusting to new places-when a lot of my fellow students were panicking about the lack of washing machines, about the selections in grocery stores, and Athens in general, I was just sort of quietly making do-but I find that going home again always throws me for a bit of a loop. I think I have an easy time adjusting because I'm pretty good at simply forgetting about things- I find that I forget a lot of the things that I do at home, or a lot of the conveniences that I have, when I am away, and so remembering those things again is always a bit of a shocker. This semester the problem is especially severe, since Greece was a lot more different than California is.

There was the shock with American money, of course, as I had suspected that there would be. Having my computer back, with reliable and quick internet access, was also a pleasant surprise. But it's not just that. I'm in perpetual amazement at the dishwasher, the washing machine, television, the microwave, the fact that everything in stores is in English, the abundance of choices at those stores (who needs quite that many choices when it comes to shampoo? Really?). I'm having a particularly difficult time in stores- for three and a half months, I tried to speak Greek whenever possible, and so going to the store and asking for things in English seems vaguely wrong at this point.

However, I find that I really miss Greece. I miss the ease of going places on the metro, I miss the acropolis, I miss popping in to the grocery store and cooking for myself, I miss living somewhere near my friends and spending time with them. I'm worried that my Greek is going to get rusty, and I feel like a semester, learning Italian, isn't going to be great for it either.

It is also rather tricky to switch gears from Greece to Italy. I was studying some Italian, and had a hard time remembering that there isn't a neuter. Or cases. And that the pronunciation rules aren't the same as those of Latin. Or French. It's going to be an interesting semester.