Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

I never suffer from culture shock. Seriously. Well, maybe I’ve had an hour or two here and there when I get irritated at a certain aspect of my adopted country, but that’s about it.

I always suffer from reverse culture shock. Sometimes quite badly. When I came back from three months from Burkina Faso in 2006, and back from Guatemala in 2008, I had a really hard time adjusting. Canada seemed cold (both literally and figuratively) and I had a hard time relating to my own country anymore. Each time, I became depressed for a couple months.

I was just back in Canada for a couple weeks. Not enough time to get really down, but certainly enough time to get weirded out by my own culture. The trip was sort of strange to begin with: I hadn’t been planning on going home until about 16 hours before my flight out of Guatemala City (see earlier posts about being sick.) So unlike earlier homecomings, I didn’t have much time to mentally prepare myself.

One moment I was in this crazy, chaotic and beautiful country, and the next I was in a neat, orderly winter wasteland.

Over the next few days. I noted how ill at ease I was sometimes at home.

Going to buy a tea at a cafe, I realize all I have is a $20. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Can you make change for this?”

“Uh, of course,” the person at the counter says. Duh. I’m not it a country where giving a largish bill for a smallish purchase is practically a crime against humanity.

In Guatemala, you are supposed to put your toilet paper in the wastebasket, not the toilet. As a result, I often did the same thing in Canada, and then had to – ew – pick the piece out of the wastebasket in order to flush it.

At the grocery store, which was already a head trip with its bright lights, overpriced produce and bucketloads of identical suburbanites, I couldn’t fulfill a simple task.

“Go get some crackers,” my mother asked.

But the cracker aisle was too much to handle. 40, maybe 50 varieties of crackers. How could I possibly choose something out of such an excessive selection? I panicked, walked back in shame, and admitted to my mom she’d have to go get crackers herself.