Culture Shock...

This phrase is used SO much on the mission field!

You then leave the mission field and you here it again – or in other terms:

Reverse culture shock or re-entry

I like the term ‘re-entry’ – it has a funny feel for me that term, like you are leaving another world and being entered back into your first world.

Well I guess it is true - England and Brazil are very different.

I was really nervous about coming home and having to deal with the culture shock and adapting back into my life – which implies that Brazil wasn’t my life, but it very much was!  Anyway…it has not been as difficult or as scary as I thought.  I prayed a lot about it, as I didn’t think I would find it easy.  But something I have come to realise after finally leaving the house and seeing someone other than a family member is that England and Brazil cannot be linked in anyway in my mind.

I don’t really know how to put what is in my head in words that will make sense and not offend anyone – but it is two different worlds.

The way we live in England is normal for the people who live in England – the wealth, the ability to generally buy what we want, the nice buildings, the fashions, the access to a huge variety of food, the need for things and the latest gadgets, and well depending on where you are from – never seeing poverty or the need to really think about it – apart from the charity adverts you see on the television.  How you could see 20 people walking in town and you wouldn’t talk to anyone, just keep your headphones in your ears. England is a work-focused country – run by time

So the way people live in Brazil is normal for the people who live in Brazil – the slums, people sleeping on the streets, the clear divide of class, the high cost of things and people not being able to afford it, the way the police system works, how you have to go to three different counters in a shop to buy just one item, everyone talks to you – you would always see someone you know and have chat, Brazil is people focused and time well – you need to be prepared for them to come when they are ready!

What I use to consider normal is not normal for me now – I am sure it will become ‘normal’ again to me – but the wealth, the feel of normal shops feeling so ‘upper class’ and well me feeling out of place is how I feel now.  It all seems so extravagant…do we really need all this – people in Brazil live fine with what they have?! I am not saying that England is wrong in the way it is. I just suppose I am coming from a different perspective now.  But should I allow it become normal to me once again – will it ever feel normal for me again – now I have seen another ‘world’.

I am ‘re-entering’ back to one world, which is so different from the world I have been living and working in for the last 11 months; a world I fell in love with, where I felt I belonged, a culture and people that I loved…How can this world (Brazil) … not effect how I live back into my previous world of England…