The Istanblues

I first heard about the W-curve before I studied abroad in Prague.

The W-curve refers to the phases of culture shock, and honestly I didn’t pay too much attention to it in our pre-departure meeting. Culture shock wasn’t something I would have to worry about.

It wasn’t until I finished the whole culture shock cycle that I reacquainted myself with the W-curve and realized just how relevant it had been to me.

You see, around the two- or three-months mark in Prague, I started to feel horribly blue. Prague was too sad, too gray. Why couldn’t I be somewhere else, somewhere like Barcelona? Barcelona was warm and colorful and modern and full of life. Prague was dripping with post-communist sadness. Maybe I’d picked the wrong place to study. Maybe Prague wasn’t the place for me. Of course, this feeling passed. Soon Prague again felt like joy, like my personal playground. I loved my friends and the bars and the cobblestoned side streets and the parks exploding with lilacs. Leaving Prague was the hardest thing of all and I felt crushed by reverse culture shock when I returned to the States, burying myself in work to avoid dealing with the real live fact that I wasn’t in the Czech Republic anymore.

That reverse culture shock was just the second valley of the W-curve. It didn’t matter that I didn’t pay attention to it before I went abroad—the reality of culture shock is a normal and often inevitable part of living in a new and strange country. I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’m currently between the two- and three-month mark and I’m feeling those culture shock blues. There’s just a general malaise, a feeling of uncertainty and uneasiness. At first I didn’t know what to think. Then I remembered that damned W. Culture shock happens. It is not shameful and it is not permanent. It passes. That’s the beauty of the W-curve—when you’re feeling down, it curves back up. And things have already started to feel a little bit brighter. There are a few things I’ve done to cope with these blues—I reached out to some of my support system here in Istanbul. (Even if it’s a lesser number of people than I have in the States, it’s still helpful to TALK to someone!) I went outside and enjoyed the sunshine. I made a list of the things that were bothering me and the things I wanted to accomplish. All these are baby steps,  but they help me maintain forward motion and banish the Istanblues.