IDENTITY
NAME: Katie Larson
IDENTIFIES: Expatriate
EXPERIENCE ABROAD: Taught for six years, volunteering in the summer in
developing countries such as Peru, Costa Rica, and Mongolia. Her husband,
Blake, was accepted into an MBA program in Barcelona, where they lived
for 15 months beginning in 2011.
IN
Read Larson’s blog at
elcaminolesstraveled.blogspot.co.uk
her travel blog, Larson, an Antioch University PhD in Leadership and
Change pre-candidate, addresses the phenomenon of reverse culture shock.
“Away from all the new stimuli, the brain doesn’t know how to cope with
normal again,” she says. “You almost feel depressed.”
The shock was all the more severe when Larson and her husband departed
Spain. Upon returning to her hometown of Grayslake, Illinois, she found
herself “fighting the process of reintegration,” strongly attached as she was
to the new “chameleon identity” that she’d developed as she’d moved among
cultures. She found it difficult to communicate what she’d learned on her
travels and became hyperaware of sounding snobby or pretentious.
“Why is this so hard for you?” her
mother had asked. “This is where you
grew up.”
On her blog, she describes
returning as “drowning in a freezing
pool” of American culture.
“What is so frustrating and so
exciting about American culture is
that I understand everything on every
level,” she explains. “When I’m away,
I can keep in touch with the parts of
the culture that I like and appreciate,
but when I’m home, I’m confronted with all of the layers, and that’s
frustrating to return to.”
For example, while enjoying a haircut at her favorite salon
for the first time since returning from Spain, Larson was held
hostage to a lengthy, vehement exchange between two grown
women concerning Kim Kardashian.
Still, she concedes that there is the risk of romanticizing
foreign cultures, especially when you don’t speak the la