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Home Again

I’ve been back on US soil for six days now and so far I haven’t felt even one ounce of reverse culture shock.  And I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed.  After my experience returning to New York from Tokyo and after  reading this article on Vagabondish, I was actually looking forward to it.

Reverse culture shock is a little like walking around your neighborhood at dusk.  All the houses, lawn-mowers and mailboxes are exactly how you remembered them, except the edges are all a little blurry and everything that was once familiar takes on this magical, twilight-y vibe.  Nothing feels quite real.  It’s trippy.  And freakin’ awesome.

But the only sign of reverse culture shock I’ve experienced and about the only reminder I have that I was even in Central America at all, is that I have to continually remember to flush the toilet paper  (and not dispose of it in the trash). When I first arrived into the airport in Miami, I actually forgot and absentmindedly stuffed it into the small waste receptacle that’s reserved for discarding feminine hygiene products.  Oops.

But besides that and the one time I slipped and muttered ‘Lo siento’ instead of ‘I’m sorry’, after I whacked a man with my hammock while I was trying to peel it off the baggage claim, I’ve found it pretty easy to readjust back again.  It’s like I never left.

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t gone for very long (only four and a half months) or maybe it’s because I’ve left and returned home again so many times in the past that I’ve grown immune to it.

After all, something can only be a ‘shock’ if it’s unexpected.  When your life is consistently lived between cultures and you’re forever in a state of limbo, that stage of readjustment stops being a stage and just becomes a barely noticed fact of life.

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Reannon Muth
Reannon Muth is a full-time writer, social media consultant and owner and manager of the Taken by the Wind travel blog. Born in Hawaii, Reannon has lived in five countries, at Disney World and on a cruise ship. She currently lives in fabulous Las Vegas.