Adapting to a New Culture

Adapting to a New Culture

Introduction

Adaptation takes place through direct and indirect contacts with an unfamiliar culture (Kim, 2005). The process of adapting to a new culture is an interactive and ongoing process between a person and his/her environment. As a new entrant into a new culture, one might first experience the stress of being unfamiliar with the environment and norms of the environment. Over time, a person is likely to adapt to those changes. However, with every adaptive experience, other situations may come along that will again cause stress. Nevertheless, through making regular adjustments to various experiences, a person is likely to achieve a sense of personal growth (Storti, 2001). The process of adjusting or adapting to one's environment and to new circumstances is a natural part of developing one's own identity. People come to know themselves better and come to define themselves differently as they cycle through varying adaptive experiences throughout their lives.

Discussion

Being a U.S. citizen, when I decided to go to Sweden for further education, I was pretty much concerned regarding the cultural differences I had to come across during my stay. And when I reached Sweden, I got to know that my fright was somehow true. For me or any international student studying in any part of the world, there are actually four phases to go through before completely adapting a new culture. And these four phases are:

Honeymoon Phase

During the honeymoon phase, people are fascinated with the sights, sounds, and tastes of the new culture. Sojourners or temporary residents feel enthusiastic and carefree about their adventures abroad and cast a positive glow on their interactions (Kim, 2005). During this time, people may choose to focus on similarities between the host country and their home country and engage in more superficial “tourist” behaviors, only skimming the surface of their new culture and not penetrating the deeper social structures of the culture. Cultural differences and awkward social interactions might be disregarded as humorous or eccentric (Gudykunst & Kim, 1997). The honeymoon phase can be the result of experiencing relatively few negative incidents in the first days abroad, not being attentive to hosts' subtle negative reactions to sojourners' indiscretion, or tending to ignore negative events and social cues in order to protect the self. Moreover, surface interactions that often accompany the honeymoon phase present few identity challenges. Competency is not challenged, because the sojourner is praised for even simple tasks, and identities are not challenged, because the sojourner is viewed as a novelty by the hosts. The honeymoon phase often begins before the journey and continues for a short duration upon arrival in the host country. When I asked another international student in Sweden named Allie Virgin regarding culture adaption she said that: “Thankfully for me everybody in Sweden knew English, so learning Swedish was optional. But I did learn it and it was quite an easy language. But I wouldn't know as much as I do without the help of Swedish ...