Definitely Stage 2...?

Depending on which website you browse, or who you ask, there are between 3-4 stages to cultural adjustment.  Most agree that the first stage is Honeymoon.  All is lovely, all is great, life is good.  New place, new people, new foods.  Cool as a cat.  It's the second phase that I have found several different names to, among them "The Hostility Stage," "The Crisis Phase," The Irritability Stage,"or "The Conflict Stage."  I think you get the gist of this stage.  This is the "grass is greener in my home country stage." It's the initial shock of reality that hits you that you are not going home.  Then, depending on which website you pick, there are a few other stages in between stage 2 and the last stage.  Some have Stage 3 as "The Humor Stage" where one can find the silliness in what earlier caused your pain and vexation.  Others call Stage 3 "The Recovery Stage"- quite dramatic. But most sites agree that the last stage is "Acceptance" or "The Home Stage"- you have assimilated into you new adopted country.

I rather don't like the names to stage 2, as I don't feel my family is in a state of constant crisis, hostility, irritability or conflict.  Rather, we are just in what I may call, the "Middle School Years."  Sometimes all is good and in equilibrium with the world we live in.  Then we become puberty based brats that want to scream and yell for no particular reason over things we have absolutely no control over.  Take my new dryer...OK, bad example, as I haven't been able to assimilate into this part of the culture that hang dries their laundry...though in my defense, MANY people here have dryers.  I really have never been so excited to actually do laundry...soft underwear once again!  I got my dryer on Friday.  As I was unpacking it, it occurred to me that perhaps the directions would be in Dutch.  Nervously, I opened the package, and to my relief, saw 3 different handbooks with the same instructions in 10 different languages.  As I leafed through 1 book, then the second, then the third, my anger mounted as I realized, I didn't have an owner's manual that had instructions in English.  10 different languages, and not one of them were in English.  I have to say that just a tiny bit of of the John McEnroe effect that CAN inflict my family reared its ugly head.  (In defense of Mr. McEnroe, he has tempered himself very well, I speak in terms of the "old" McEnroe).  Nothing that a glass or 2 of wine, and the ever reliable Web didn't fix for me.  I was soon laughing (Brett was laughing sooner than I) over my silly behavior.    Perhaps, after all, we are moving out of Stage 2 and entering Stage 3 - the Humor Stage.  Though I am sure we will regress, it is promising that I can chuckle over some of this now- especially now that we all have soft underwear!

Enjoy some of our "in a state of happy equilibrium" time over the last few weeks.

Cheers,
Noel