The first culture shock is when you arrive in a faraway land. The second culture shock is when you arrive\u00a0back home.<\/p>\n
The second one is stronger.<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
Life in a quiet suburb of San Jos\u00e9, California is much different from life in the bustling student town of Utrecht in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
For one thing, I can’t bike around everywhere like I used to — not unless I feel like getting flattened by the cars crossing into the painted bike lane. Favorite places and favorite people are no longer accessible on a whim. I miss that freedom.<\/p>\n
It’s daily life and daily routines that I miss the most. I miss skating on the ice. I miss stroopwafels, late-night kapsalons, and the raw herring they sold at the Saturday market. I miss tea times with my neighbors. I miss the coffees with friends, and coffees alone out in town. I miss the Friday afternoon drinks that took place every week, at the same time, at the same place, with the same people. Oh, what I would do just to hear a Dutchie raise their pitch every time they say “doei!”<\/p>\n
What a special time it was!<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
It’s easy to romanticize the past, especially when it means so much to you.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0I know I will find reasons to love it back home, just as I have found many, many reasons to love my time in Utrecht.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first culture shock is when you arrive in a faraway land. The second culture shock is when you arrive\u00a0back home. The second one is stronger. ~ Life in a quiet suburb of San Jos\u00e9, California is much different from life in the bustling student town of Utrecht in the Netherlands. For one thing, I … Continue reading “adjusting to life back home, after a year abroad (a few quick thoughts)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3MSpn-io","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}