Home for over a week now....

Hey peeps,

Sorry for not updating sooner. I've been home for 10 days...but only been really awake for a fraction of that time. During the first 4 or 5 days, I basically just slept. Then, the last few days I have been up all night working on manga while family are asleep. So, my sleep schedule is off. My room, which was clean when I got home, is a disaster. And homesickness for Japan is setting in. Fun stuff. It's all part of moving back home. Fortunately, I received all my packages with my stuff intact. (Thank goodness!) My kitties here love me, though one of them wasn't sure what to think of me when I first came home since I smelled different. He straightened out once I changed into some clothes that have been in my closet here.

Moving home is definitely an interesting experience. The weirdest part for me is that I felt as if living in Japan never happened...until I chat with friends I met through studying abroad, look at my stuff from Japan or start falling into habits that I developed while in Japan. Some of these habits are cultural habits, some are just general living habits.

I also view and experience life differently from the time before I left for Japan. This can make life both harder and easier.

In short, re-adjusting to life at home is not a walk in the park. A lot must happen before one can readjust to life at home. You can't just become the person you once were due to the accumulation of experiences and changes in viewpoint that you have gathered from being abroad. You're just a different person. So this make things hard, especially when things at home seem the same as before...or when things have changed in a way that makes life that much more difficult.

The last 10 days, I haven't been able to think about Japan, even when I wanted. That's because it will cause homesickness to surface faster than if I don't think about it. I first needed to recover from the crazy last few days of my stay in Japan and create a routine at home before I could begin to tackle homesickness. This homesickness, mind you, is linked to an effect called reverse culture shock. I first heard of this effect at my missions training back in 2010. I placed a nifty link about reverse culture shock in the term itself. In short, this comes from having to readjust to one's home culture after spending time in another culture. It can also be more brutal than culture shock is originally. Fun stuff. I dealt with it after my missions trip, though, at the time, I refused to accept it. Now I know better.

So now you know. Reverse culture shock does exist and is often discussed prior to someone leaving for a long-term trip abroad.

Anyhoo, I am home and still trying to readjust to the busy life at home.

Until then, later peeps!