12 Days of Christmas

For me, the 12 days of Christmas began yesterday.

Twelve days of counting down until I leave India.

I literally can't wait and I am yearning for it with every fibre of my being.

Now, my darling husband is going to be reading this and internally cringeing.  He will be feeling a crushing guilt and will be trying, right about now, to formulate a plan to 'fix' things.  That's him, and one of the many reasons I love him.  However, what he perhaps doesn't fully appreciate is that my current, somewhat negative, frame of mind is perfectly normal.  In fact, it is even documented and has a name.

And I have been there before.

I am undoubtedly experiencing true culture shock right now.

Being a teacher, I love a good visual aid, so I put together my own version of what this is like in a graph.

Stage 1 - Preparation

Getting our visas, packing up our home, parties & celebrations, saying goodbyes... this phase was a rollercoaster of emotions.  For every new and exciting development, there was an equally frustrating hold up, or an unbearably sad farewell.  It was mentally and emotionally exhausting.

Stage 2 - Honeymoon

Arriving in India was undeniably exciting and fueled by adrenaline.  It felt good to be moving on from the uncertainty of 'preparing to move', to the actual 'moving' bit!  Everything was new and busy and we were occupied with a lot.  Meeting new people, getting a new place to live, exploring supermarkets, starting a new school ... all of these things kept our emotions buoyed and we approached life positively.

Stage 3 - Initial Culture Shock

After a few weeks of excitement, we started our new 'normal'.  Except everything seemed anything but normal.  This period saw the excitement waning and the frustrations setting in.  Congested and polluted roads filled with motorbikes and rickshaws, extremes of glamour and poverty, struggles to find familiar foods, bouts of Delhi Belly, trying to figure out routines, niggles with the new apartment, and challenges with school buses.  It was a painful process and one that was made harder because our family unit was divided during the day ... Clem at work, kids at school, me running around like a silly so-and-so hunting and gathering!

Stage 4 - Superficial Coping

After a few months, things seemed to get easier.  We knew where to get most of the daily essentials, we made a few friends to call on for help and socializing, our belongings were all unpacked, and we were getting used to being employers of 'domestic help'.  We even had visitors and we were starting to explore and relax in our new environment.

Stage 5 - True Culture Shock

As shown on the graph above, this is me right now.  We have been in Pune for almost 5 months now, and the small daily frustrations of life in a new culture are really starting to grate.  The ongoing (and seemingly never ending) challenges with poor air quality, medical stuff, schooling, not speaking the local language, traffic, shopping, and sticking out like a sore thumb are, frankly, exhausting. But when that is set against a feeling of being underutilized and unemployed it is a weird mix of emotions.  There are plenty of things I could do to occupy my time, but I am disinclined to do any of them right now.  Homesickness and nostalgia has set in, and I am physically longing for my old 'normal'.  To be honest, it's a weird feeling to be homesick for TWO places simultaneously... I miss Texas just as much as I miss the UK.  For my 'third culture kids' who have spent more of their formative years out of the UK than in it, that feeling must be even weirder.

Stage 6 - Adaptation

Slowly, the new environment will become more familiar and we will develop coping mechanisms to help us live here happily.

Stage 7 - Equilibrium

If we are here long enough, I have no doubt that our 'new' host country will feel like home, and the prospect of moving on or repatriating will be daunting.



So while I feel quite sad at times at the moment (and I know that my husband will hate me admitting that), I know that this is perfectly normal.  I have been here in this stage before, when we moved to the US, and I know that I will also move onto the next stage.  I will admit that moving to a developing country like India has made the highs and lows on the graph far more dramatic than they were when we moved to America... Texas is unique and culturally different to my own home in the UK, but not as bewilderingly different as India is to me!  I am also at a very different stage in my life than when I moved to Houston and that makes a difference, too.  Back in 2010, I was on a career break with 3 small children (two of whom were home with me every day).  I was used to my role as stay at home mum, and was content to not be working.  Right now, not being employed is giving me time to dwell and yearn for busier and more rewarding times.

To be honest, I think I would have to live here for a veeeerrrrry long time to ever get to the stage of 'equilibrium', but I know that...

I will adapt.

Things will get easier.

And never will a Christmas Dinner have tasted so good as it will in a few weeks from now!