While being in another country has this effect on a person, where everything is amazing and wonderful, making every new experience in the country feel like breathing air for the first time, it can also be suffocating. It can be overwhelming. It can be tiring, constantly struggling all the time. Not being able to communicate or being able to get around easily, and missing every little thing about home can really exhaust you.

I’m currently in this state of exhaustion. I am loving every experience I have here in France, but I also am tired and homesick. I completely agree with Barna’s statement, “the innate physiological makeup of the human animal is such that discomfort of varying degrees occurs in the presence of alien stimuli.  Without the normal props of one’s own culture, there is unpredictability, helplessness, a threat to self-esteem, and a general feeling of “walking on ice”—all of which are stress producing.” His representation of culture shock is extremely valid, mostly because I am feeling it. Recently, I became sick, as most of my fellow students have as well, but I found this sickness extremely unsettling. Not because I was super sick, which I was, but mainly because I felt so helpless and defenseless. Not only was I extremely sick, but I also had to go to the doctors, go to the pharmacy, and go to the store, all while being sick. Normally, these would be easy things that I can handle on my own, but in a foreign country with a language barrier and no car, it made things a little bit difficult. I think not only being sick was bad enough, but the stress of being sick and having to do all these things by myself made it even worse. I was able to get everything I needed done moderately easily, but I felt so agitated towards the end of the day because of the struggle that I was mad because I knew I could have taken care of all of these things easier back home in the states, and I would have felt better in no time.

It is just subtle things that can make one go somewhat mad while abroad, at least in my opinion, but in the end, that is all that the struggle is; little things that do not really matter in the first place. We can adapt and learn to be more self-sufficient. I believe 100% that culture shock is winning in my scenario, although I continue to still fall in love with this country more and more each day. I think that culture shock effects most people very dramatically, but we all handle it differently, and ultimately, even if we are having problems and exhausting ourselves, at least we get to do it in a beautiful country.