Week 5: Personal Blog 15/03/13 - 22/03/13

Snowing again in Poland!

On Friday we attended our ‘Polish for Beginners’ class and the lecturer began the seminar with a discussion about the ‘Phases of Cultural shock’. It had never occurred to me about these phases, especially as I was having such a fantastic time in Poznan. However, the lecturer outlined the phases like this:

  

Phase 1: The Honeymoon Stage

Phase 2: How can I live like this? What am I doing here? I want to go home!

Phase 3: Let’s try to survive and be happy!

We discussed the elements that can create this unsettled and anxious feeling within Phase 2. We agreed that one of the major issues could be the difficulty to express ourselves, including the language barriers and the differences in facial expressions and body language in different cultures. We also agreed that this can be a lack of familiar surroundings and ‘home comforts’. I jokingly said to my French classmate that I must still be in the honeymoon phase, as I was still very happy and content.

Just after our class

Personally, before coming to Poznan, I hadn't really worried too much about homesickness, as I have never thought of myself as a ‘home bird’. However, “Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was” (Picoult, 2009). This began to ring true to me when I started to feel unwell over the weekend. 

By Sunday I had a sore throat, a cough, a temperature and my asthma was beginning to get irritated. I was invited to a friend’s birthday party and I did everything I could to ignore my symptoms but in the end I gave up and had to lie in bed. At that moment, all I wanted was a cup of my mother’s honey and milk remedy and to lie in my bed watching television. However, my Turkish friend used his mother’s remedy to get rid of my temperature, using cold wet cloths, which actually really helped.

Our tram stop

The next day, I thought back to ‘The Phases of Cultural shock’ and decided to investigate it. There seems to be a difference in opinion about how many stages there are, such as Pederson (1995) who states there are five. Nonetheless, they all seem to agree upon the same principals of a ‘Honeymoon’, ‘Negotiation’, ‘Adjustment’ and ‘Mastery phase’, however, unfortunately Pederson (1995) states that individuals only begin to settle into a culture after 3 months, which will be when I am leaving!

This week really made me think about my attitude to growing up and leaving my family home, for some reason I seemed in a rush. It reminded me of something I had read in a book called ‘The other Belfast’;

‘home is a place you grow up, wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to’ (Rickerby, 2011).

I’m feeling much better now but I'm going to take it easier so that I can fully recover over the next few days!

References:

Pederson, P. 1995 'The Five stages of Cultural shock:

 

Critical Incidents Around the World'. ABC.

Picoult, J. 2009 'Handle with Care' Simon and Schuster,

Rickerby, J,S. 2011 'The other Belfast' Xlibris Corporation