I'm dreading being without my electrical stimulator, though, but I have to mail it in to the manufacturer. They'll run tests on it, but I think it just needs a new battery. Hopefully it'll be just a week. I have a nicer unit than Medicare covers, but if it's just a battery they might cover that. They've been paying for the electrodes and leeds, when they need replacing. All these things add up.
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This post will probably cover two articles. The first one is:
David, Kenneth H. (1971). Culture shock and the development of self-awareness. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 4(1), 44-48.
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"....[P]ersonality characteristics have shown negligible relationships to the degree of culture shock that a sojourner will encounter.
A more effective predictor of the intensity of the culture shock is related to the degree of similarity between the sojourner's home culture and the host culture - the greater the similarity, the less intense the culture shock... We would expect the sojourner who has overcome his culture shock and benefited from his experience to be better prepared to cope with a third culture if the third culture is similar to the second..." (p. 48)
The first part of the quote about personality characteristics just means that things like shyness, sense of humor, etc. and that those things don't seem to help predict whether a person will do well or now in another culture.
As far as personality, I suppose mine would have been as likely as the next to succeed except that I had from my teen years an international interest and then studied international studies (European Studies, to be exact), so I had that added background.
There are three country backgrounds that I've lived in abroad, but I'm going to also cound the Vienna mission, since that was really where the "culture shock" came from, if anywhere, at least in terms of what the Vienna mission H.R. director spoke of. So this is what we had, from the most familiar culture to me to the most culturally distant that I lived in:
1. Vienna mission where I worked (mostly Americans, conservative Evangelical Christians)
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Siberia, Russia
4. Seoul., S. Korea
According to the text, I should have had culture shock in Seoul, but not at the Vienna mission. In fact Vienna, Austria is also a Germanic country which is, if nothing else, in the same branch of the Indo-European language family at least.
Let's move on to Siberia, Russia. How come I could live in Siberia for 6 1/2 years just fine and they're a lot more distant to me than the people I was working with at the Vienna mission and I didn't have so much stress like with the Vienna mission. Even the Komsomols weren't as bad as the mission was. How can this be? How can I an American conservative Evangelical Christian have more culture shock stressors working with the Vienna mission than I did in Siberia, Russia? Does this make sense? Is this logical? Does this smack of something strange going on? It does to me.
Anyway, that's the way it was.
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The next text is:
Adler, Peter S. (1975). The transitional experience: an alternative view of culture shock. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 15(4), 13-23.
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"The transitional process which occurs in the cross-cultural experience is a depth experience. It marks the growth and development of personality along a number of dimensions. At the perceptual level, it represents the movement of personality through a symbiotic state of single reality awareness to a differential state whereby there is an awareness and acceptance of the interdependence of many realities. Emotionally, the transition marks the change from dependence on reinforcements to independence, while the largest sense of self-concept, it is the change from a monocultural to an intercultural frame of reference." (p. 20)
I suppose it might be useful to use the four cultures representing where I've lived and my enculturation abroad.
1. Vienna mission. I never could make this transition because of the way the mission handled it so that it wasn't direct and I didn't trust them and because of our apparent value differences.
2. Vienna, Austria. I know in general, before moving to Austria, I had an idealized view of Europe and sort of wanted to emulate everything then eventually I realized that not everything is so wonderful. But I had gotten over that by the time I had arrived to live in Vienna, I think. My idea was to have a ministry because I was going to be a secretary and I wanted more of a ministry, so that was why I was getting involved in the Austrian church, etc. I think I felt pretty comfortable in culture right away, but I kept learning more and more about the culture, and that would maybe contribute to my being intercultural. Because I worked around Americans, I was pressured to go to the American church, and I spent several months in America, I think I didn't know as much about the Austrian culture as if I'd been able to be more stable there.
3. Siberia, Russia. Yes, I really think I got a good feel for the Russian culture when I lived there, and I think it was a sort of symbiotic state. I think intercultural is a good word to describe how I felt, because I never felt like I could completely lose my Americanness complately. So, for example, I fixed traditional Christmas dinner for friends, and they'd have me over for their celebrations. I guess it really did change my self-concept, although I'm not sure I'd thought about it in those terms exactly. I think it did though.
4. Seoul, Korea. I was only here a year, so that's not so long, and I was back home a couple weeks in the middle of that year too. I don't think that's enough time to have gone though that process for Korea, being such a different culture. Nevertheless, there were some thing that did make an impact on me. But I don't think they were the kind of things described in this text. I didn't reach the intercultural level. I came to the reality awareness about the Korean "caste" system (I ran my theory by some Korean to see what they thought of it), but I didn't like it and I'm glad that at least I know that a lot of Koreans don't like it either so I don't feel so badly about not liking it. But according to this text I'm supposed to "accept [this caste system]", which I didn't. (Don't get me wrong, it's not literally a caste system, but the social norms are pretty limiting.)
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I must admit, I'm really curious: one post recently has garnered a whole lot of attention and then ones following it have been ignored. So that's very interesting. I don't know what's going on. So there are pros and cons to not allowing comments. I just don't want to get a lot of hate mail. Just what I need on top of my migraine and fibromyalgia. I'm really, really curious, though.
