Caroline

I’ve talked a lot about the culture in the country that I grew up and compared it to yours. Most of the time, I’ve written about positive culture chocks that I’ve encountered in my every day life. But I also experience a big difference when it comes to the way we are being brought up, and the way we live our lives.

Some of my thoughts, I’ve posted under the page Sweden vs. Oklahoma. Some of you may think that I’m a bit nagging - and I agree with you - but I guess it’s just a way for me to handle being away from home.

This purpose of this blog is primarily to write about my feelings – in other words, it is a very egocentric blog. My plan was not to write about the cultural differences between our countries. But if you have read my prior posts, you know I have.

I have a theory about why this has happened: culture shock.

Culture shock describes the anxiety produced when a person moves to a completely new environment. This term expresses the lack of direction, the feeling of not knowing what to do or how to do things in a new environment, and not knowing what is appropriate or inappropriate.

There are several symptoms of culture shock. First of all, there are the symptoms we all know about, for example sadness, loneliness, longing for family, depression and loss of identity. But, and this is interesting, other symptoms of culture shock is for example developing stereotypes about the new culture, identifying with the old culture or idealizing the old country. Another symptom is trying too hard to absorb everything in the new culture or country.

This could be it. My weird obsession about comparing the culture I’m used to with yours, could be a simple symptom of culture shock. And this, my friends, really has to do with feelings!

Wide, personal and most likely very difficult to write about. That’s probably the best way to describe the topic of my blog: feelings. I’m gonna try to capture the different kinds of feelings that you may experience when you pack your things and move across the globe. Because that ’s what I did three weeks ago.

It all started a few month ago. I made the decision to go to Oklahoma State University, even though I had no idea what the school would look like or what it could offer me. What I did know, was that the school was situated in the United States, and that was good enough for me. Just after celebrating the new year, I said goodbye to my friends, family and boyfriend. 24 hours later, I had replaced my home country Sweden to the U.S.

At some point in our lives, we are all in the situation where we have to leave someone we love, just like I left my friends, family and boyfriend at home. This is, without any doubt, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Still, this is my own choice. I am going to use this blog as a kind of therapy, where I can write about and discuss the different kinds of feelings that I will experience.