Reentry

     I have officially been home for a week and I'm still exhausted. The Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday leading up to our return home I slept for a total of about 5 hours.  I arrived home and slept for 9 hours straight, without moving the entire night. I woke up and took a long hot shower, which felt soooo good.  It was nice to sleep in my own bed with familiar smells and sights.
     There are some differences in how I act and what I do.  I think my family and friends have begun to notice.  I detest driving now.  I never used to mind it, but all of the walking around Barcelona and using the metro, I realize what a nuisance driving is.  Many things are "like riding a bicycle".  You literally just fall back into the routine of things, like you never stopped doing them.  It's amazing how your body just automatically remembers how to do things.  
     There is something called "reentry shock", also known as "reverse culture shock". Culture shock is the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country, or a move between social environments.  Reverse Culture Shock (a.k.a. "Re-entry Shock", or "own culture shock") may take place when one returns to his or her home culture after growing accustomed to a new one can produce the same effects as initial culture shock.  The affected person often finds this more surprising and difficult to deal with than the original culture shock.  Many people experience several of the following symptoms:

• Excessive concern over cleanliness and health
• Feelings of helplessness and withdrawal
• Irritability
• Anger
• Glazed stare
• Desire for home and old friends
• Physiological stress reactions
• Homesickness
• Boredom
• Withdrawal
• Getting "stuck" on one thing
• Suicidal or fatalistic thoughts
• Excessive sleep
• Compulsive eating/drinking/weight gain
• Stereotyping host nationals
• Hostility towards host nationals
• Restlessness

     No one is ever quite prepared to experience culture shock coming home.  "It won't happen to me", they think.  Most returnees have extremely unrealistic expectations for the home culture and their reentry is idealized.  Friendships aren’t as intense as they were the day one left and others do not have enough capacity to listen to fulfil the returnees need to communicate about his or her experiences abroad.  Family and friends expect that the returnee will be happy to be back home and to be interested in catching up on popular culture and local gossip; they want him or her to get back to normal as soon as possible.  
     To everyone else, it has been a normal month.  They have been going about their day-to-day business.  However, our month in Spain literally blitzed by in the blink of an eye.  An entire month to everyone else was basically a week in Spain.  Everything here is exactly the same, which pales in comparison to the bustling excitement of Barcelona.  While everything at home is familiar and therefore comforting, it is also incredibly bland and boring.  I have very limited interest in certain things that used to interest me.  I am considering deleting my Tumblr account.  I spend majority of my time reading or exercising, which is unusual in that before Spain I would spend hours on the computer before and never budge from the couch.  I have no interest in American pop music; the radio is rarely on in my car anymore.
    I also have discovered that I look down upon America more than I did before.  I believed that it was the land of opportunities, but also a country that never learns from its mistakes.  I know notice this more blatantly than ever.  It is not that Spain is better; there is no such thing as a perfect country or nation.
     I'm a different person now.  I have no patience for dramatics anymore; I used to not mind it.  I was definitely the person that always wanted to be there for everyone and ended up getting hurt a lot.  It isn't that I don't care anymore, I just care less.  I'm much more independent, more confident and a little less cautious of...well, everything.  There's a world outside this zip code, waiting to be explored.  This past month I realized how truly little of it I have seen.
    I have decided to change majors, officially.  It is an idea that I have been toying with for a long time, but have been afraid to do.  My experience with Mescladís was truly inspiring and now I am looking into perhaps teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) and traveling the world!
     My mom asked me if I would ever like to go back to Barcelona, and the answer is that while I loved Barcelona and would love to visit again, I could never live there.  I would not mind visiting again with some friends or my mom, but I have no interest in ever studying there again.  BIC (Barcelona International College) itself was a joke, practically a fake school.  Studying for an entire semester in Barcelona is just not one of my interests though.  I was looking forward to seeing and experiencing Barcelona practically my entire life and now that I've seen it, I really would like to travel to see other places.  I think my next destination will be Santorini, also known as Thera, Greece.
     So at least for now, until my next adventure, I think this is farewell.  Not goodbye forever, simply "See you later".  So until our next adventure together... Hasta luego.