Reverse Culture Shock and Being Home

I’ve been back home now for a few months. School just started again last week. I figured I would take a few minutes and reminisce about SAS and how it is to be back home. I remember arriving in San Diego and getting off the ship as if it were yesterday. Everyone was saying there last goodbyes; making plans for reunions, etc. Some (actually a lot) attended a meeting about SAS going to Burma and in July or so they decided that they are not going back to Burma, but efforts are still being made across the U.S. to bring Burma to the attention of the American People (see one of the links that I just added). Getting off the ship sea by sea wasn’t all that long of a process but it was sad to see your friends with which you had just met 3 months ago (even though it seems like you’ve known them for years) and you’ve traveled the world with them, to say bye to them is a very odd feeling. None of it really seemed real until I was in the San Diego airport. I got off the ship, said my last good-byes and headed to the San Diego airport to see if I could get an earlier flight back to Denver. I was able to get an earlier flight (I didn’t even have to pay extra $$ for my bags even though one of them weighed 80 pounds and the other one was 70 pounds, I just told them where all I had just been and they gladly waived the fees for me) so now I only had to wait around for 2 hours instead of 5 hours, which I didn’t mind at all. It gave me some time to think about what I had just done in the past 3 months. While I was sitting in the airport I was wearing my Chinese hat (with a red star on it) with my Vietnamese rice hat on top of that, since I couldn’t pack them. I got some great looks from people while I was wearing these hats, they looked at me like I was crazy and I just laughed and laughed, it was awesome. But while I was sitting around waiting for the flight, I was listening to my ipod thinking to myself. And my first clear thought since I had gotten off the ship and arrived at the airport was: “Man, everyone is so white.” Among those thoughts was whenever I’d see kids run by me, I’d instantly think of the kids in poverty that I had seen throughout the trip. Months later I still have all kinds of associations like that one. A few minutes later I turned around to look at a poster on the wall that was behind me because I had noticed that it was of a rhinoceros, my instant reaction was: “That looks like something you’d see in Africa.” Then down at the bottom of the poster it said, “Come see the rare White Rhinoceros at the San Diego Zoo, it’s like no other experience, it’ll be as if you’re in Africa.” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at that, not because it’s funny or anything but because I had just been to Africa not long ago and it just came off as funny. Once I finally got back to Denver, it was very weird seeing family and friends again. I wasn’t sure what to expect coming back but it wasn’t what I received. Everyone’s reaction was basically the same monotone reaction of, “oh, James is back, cool.” And that was about it. I guess I had been thinking of it being more extravagant but it definitely was not that; which I was pretty glad of, because I wasn’t sure what to say to people or anything like that. The first few days back in Denver were a bit odd, I didn’t unpack at all, I kept expecting to be traveling to some foreign, exotic country any minute, which obviously didn’t happen since I wasn’t on the ship anymore. I remember the drive back to my house from the airport, thoughts kept randomly popping into my head like, “it’s so easy to get around here all you have to do is get a car or get a taxi and you can go anywhere you’d like.” And it kept appearing to me how you can go to a supermarket and get all of your essential needs without any problem. And of course the biggest change for me was that everyone speaks very good English! I can talk to people again and they actually know what I’m saying!! After a few weeks I finally decided to unpack and I slowly got back into the groove of doing things again.

But after being back I knew that I just couldn’t let everything I had seen go to waste. I couldn’t forget about the people I had seen, the events I had seen take place, etc. Because of this I “adopted” a child through this program called compassion. What it is is you “adopt” a child in a foreign country and it costs $32 a month and you pay for their schooling, medical needs, food, etc. It pays for pretty much anything they need. So I adopted a 4 year old girl who lives in Rwanda. It may not seem like much, but I’m sure it makes all the difference to this one girl and her family. So I keep trying to not let myself slink back into my old ways of being oblivious to the world, I try to keep up on the world news, etc. Right now I’m trying to plan a trip somewhere (literally anywhere out of the U.S.) just so I can travel again!! Even if it is just for a week. I definitely do miss a few things about SAS and traveling in general and I’ve made a list of a few of those things which I miss:

-In the U.S. random people don’t come up to you and ask if they can have a picture taken with you (such as happened to me a lot in China, Japan, and Malaysia), it’s odd not feeling like a celebrity anymore.

-It’s odd not being in a different country every other week and exploring.

-When I got back the Colorado temperatures of the 70’s, 80’s and even the 90’s all felt cold to me, for the first month or so I had to wear a sweatshirt around a lot. People definitely thought I was crazy, but I just told them they’d be doing it too if they had just experienced the heat of the equator almost non-stop for the past few months.

-Sleeping just isn’t all that easy when you don’t have the M.V. Explorer to gently rock you to sleep (and sometimes violently wake you up in the middle of the night, haha). But it was nice to catch up on sleep, since while on SAS nights where I got 6 – 8 hours of sleep was extremely luxurious and did not happen very often, I’d say 95% of the time I got about 4 hours of sleep, and sometimes less than that, such as when in Japan!

-Travelling around with friends in foreign countries is almost non-existent now, ah I miss it.

-Now that school has started again (August) at my regular home institution, I found myself late for class for pretty much the whole first week because I had been use to being able to wake up and have my classroom be a 2 minute walk away from my room.

-It’s odd not seeing teachers (and their families) walking around and having lunch with them or casual conversations not really related to class.

-TACO DAY – it explains itself, it was awesome.

-BARBEQUE DAY- see the explanation for Taco Day.

-Talking about the experiences you just had in that country with other friends.
-Watching the sun rise as you pull into the port a new, unknown country.

-Playing hide and seek on the M.V. Explorer.

-Playing a 6 hour game of risk.


I could probably come up with a list of things that spans for pages and pages but I don’t really have time to do that right now. But I know that SAS has initially impacted my life and it will continue to do so for as long as I live. Those experiences that I had will never escape me (I don’t want them too anyways!). I will definitely be traveling more and it has only prompted me more than ever to become a pilot so I can see more of the world. If I ever want to relive any of the experience I had all I have to do is just simply, close my eyes. I know I’ll get along fine as long as I can do that and remember this quote:


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain