This is an all ears English podcast, episode 107 find motivation and purpose after your life in the us.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection, when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and Boston, USA.
USA.
Culture shock can be strong when you arrive in a new country, but sometimes it can be even stronger when you go back home.
Today.
Hear Lindsay and Aubrey's experiences and learn how to make your re-entry a little bit better.
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Hey, Lindsay, how's it going?
Awesome, Aubrey.
I'm excited to talk today about going abroad and then coming back home.
Eventually, we always come home, don't we?
Yes, and it can be tricky.
It can be a little bit of a culture shock to come back home.
And you're sort of staring in the face all of the things that you maybe didn't love, that you preferred where you were.
There can be some things that are tricky to navigate.
It's so true.
And yeah, I think the biggest issue that hits people is and we've heard this on the podcast before is that people expect culture shock going into a culture right.
You and I have both lived in Japan.
I've lived in Japan, South America.
You've lived in Western Europe, all over the place, right?
But we expect culture shock going in.
We do not expect it. when we go home.
And that's what makes it harder sometimes.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
You don't expect it because it's the culture you're from.
But I don't know about you, but that for sure happened to me.
I experienced big time culture shock coming back to the United States.
Yeah, I'd like to hear.
Yeah.
So just briefly, I'm from a very conservative town and you could say in general that people there can be closed-minded.
And after traveling in Western Europe, my mind was opened up, right?
I became a lot more open-minded.
I started having a lot of new ideas about religion and culture and political ideas as well.
So then, coming back to rural Idaho, the United States, it was hard to see that suddenly I had no one really that I could talk to about these ideas, who was interested or who was like-minded at all.
And it shocked me because I sort of thought oh, people will be interested.
Once they realize there are these ideas out there, they'll want to think about them.
And no, that wasn't the case.
Yeah, that is so I resonate so much with what you just said.
It's so true.
I mean no matter where you go back to, whether it's a very small conservative town or even if it's just a suburban large city, right?
It's More rare because you've also been in circles of people that are very interested in that as it is.
Like maybe even just your classmates, your American classmates were already open to that because they were going through it.
So you've been having these conversations, like it's normal, about politics and challenging all your frameworks of life.
And then you're going back to the average mainstream America and it's hard to find those people.
That's devastating in a way.
And I can sort of see if I put myself in their shoes.
I see how they, why they avoid that, because they're they're sort of living this day to day and in order to be content and happy in that life.
Sometimes you do have to just accept the norm and be happy where you are and not think about or challenge those frameworks.
Or suddenly you're not happy where you are and that can be problematic.
So I get it, but it was a shock for me.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's why I love travel and movement, physical movement kind of spurs questioning.
And we kind of need that.
We need to be in that new place to question.
Otherwise, what is there to question?
Like you said, we go through our routines.
The other thing is, when I came back similar to what you said I expected people to be having these conversations with me, questioning
I also expected them to be asking me lots of questions in general about my experience.
What was it like?
What was the food like?
Show me your pictures.
That didn't happen very much.
No, right?
No one wanted to see pictures.
No one wanted to hear anything.
It was devastating.
It's really hard.
Yeah.
Well, what about?
I mean, this kind of goes to that idea of the identity that we create for ourselves when we're abroad.
And I feel like I'm going to get deep on this episode about identity, right?
And how, when we create that identity and we grab onto it, That can hurt us more, because we're losing it and it's something solid.
But why do we have to?
Ideally, it's like slipping into and not identifying too much with that identity as an expat, right?
Right.
I think you're exactly right.
And that's really what it was for me.
I was young when I first started traveling in Western Europe and I hadn't really considered, like you said, my framework.
I hadn't really considered my religious beliefs, my political beliefs.
I sort of just went along with what I had been taught by my parents.
And so to meet all of these very interesting people who had very different ideas from mine, it did make me sort of challenge who I thought I was and what I thought I believed.
But that was really healthy for me.
Yeah, totally.
And that really was the case for me.
I sort of had to get out of my hometown to let go of who I had thought I was or who I was becoming, to really become what I wanted to be.
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
For me, a big part of my quote unquote expat identity was the city life.
So I grew up in a small town, kind of an insignificant town in the countryside in New Hampshire.
Two hours from Boston, but we would go to New York City as a family.
We would see Broadway shows and I was so excited about the city.
And I said, oh, one day I'm going to live this New York life.
So I moved to Tokyo and I love the urban lifestyle.
I love the small apartment.
You're out all the time.
You're exploring different neighborhoods, coffee shops.
I just loved it.
And so when I came back, I moved to New York, partly for that reason.
Is my expat identity or my new identity?
I felt like I had to be in a cosmopolitan center, a city center, you know.
But now that I'm older, I'm thinking what could be this new identity that I don't take so seriously that comprise all these things I've done right.
It's a cosmopolitan mindset, but maybe I don't have to live in the biggest city in the world.
Right.
Sure.
Yeah, I totally see where you're coming from, because I feel like we start thinking, we come back and we think the only way I can have these experiences is if I live abroad, if I live in such and such country.
And we have to really realize that there are people, in whatever country we're in.
There are people that we're going to identify with, people we're going to disagree with.
We have to create for ourselves those experiences and that space wherever we are, right?
I know there were people... in my hometown that I could have had those conversations with.
They might not have been in my immediate vicinity, people I knew previously, but if I created those experiences to get out and meet new people, I know I would have found people to discuss these things with.
It's a matter of creating those experiences.
You create it.
And a lot of it is based on what you choose to do for a living.
I mean for us.
I think we're lucky because we are a circle of people who have lived and worked abroad.
We've all lived and worked abroad.
We're tuned into international stuff, obviously.
So a lot of it is where you work, who you spend your time with.
So you can kind of create that new identity For yourself, but I think that comes with time.
Yeah, for sure.
It's a lot of work.
And now that we have, you know, the Internet and we have all access to global ideas from people all over the world right, that were through social media platforms, through podcasts.
We're able to just nourish our brains, be able to experience any ideas we would want.
Back then, this is before the internet.
I know, definitely before podcasts.
Yes, definitely before podcasts.
All I really had were the people around me to discover and maybe a set of encyclopedias.
So how lucky to realize we now have at our fingertips global life, right?
And ideas from people from every culture, from every background that we can discover right from our living room, right.
We don't have to go anywhere for that.
Yeah, it's changed so much.
We're so lucky.
I wonder, if you and I were 18, 21 right now, if we were to go abroad now and have this experience again, would that reentry be just as hard?
Because you do have your podcast, you do have your access to everyone in the world all the time through the internet.
So I don't know, maybe it would have been easier.
Yeah, I just I feel like our minds have been expanded.
I have a feeling that I wouldn't have been quite as sheltered, quite as naive, you know, and sort of only understanding my own worldview, if I had access to, you know, friends online and other social media platforms and opportunities to meet other people before I ever left Idaho.
Yeah, but I still think there's no replacement for initially going abroad.
Spending that time in that other country like the visceral experience, the smells, the sights, the tastes, right.
Oh, for sure.
I wonder if we'll get to...
Or if technology suffices, right?
Watching YouTube videos, etc.
And it's interesting to read some of the essays that I correct for students and hear their different takes.
But almost every time they would agree with you Lindsay, that there's no substitution for technology traveling in person.
Very interesting.
So I'll leave our listeners with that thought.
Contemplate that, guys, for a while and think about your own reentry experiences.
Maybe you've lived in the US or the UK and you're back in your home country right now.
How has it been? right?
What are the hard pieces of coming home?
And come over to the socials because we are over there and let us know, right?
We're on Instagram.
We are on WeChat if you're in China.
We're on Facebook, right?
Aubrey, we're all over the place.
Exactly right.
LinkedIn, anywhere that you can find social media, you can find All Ears English with great vocab idioms, all kinds of quick tidbits.
So definitely follow us on social media.
Yeah, good stuff.
And guys, in the next episode we're going to talk about the biggest mistake that you can make in English without even talking.
Oh my gosh, I wonder what that is.
Let's find out.
It's going to be good.
Alright, thanks for hanging out today.
I'll talk to you soon.
Alright, bye.
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See you next time.
