Expanish TEFL Blog
Culture Shock and Teaching English in Buenos Aires
Whether you are going to be teaching English in Buenos Aires for 1 month, 5 months, or two years, who may experience some form of culture shock shortly after you arrival or even up to 6 months after.
What is culture shock?
Just as it sounds, culture shock is a sort of ‘shock’ you may experience when moving to a culture different from your own. The majority of us experience it at one time or another and it is a perfectly normal process of adapting to your new surroundings.
What type of culture shock to we want to avoid?
Culture shock comes in different measures of intensity, depending on the person and the degree of cultural change. A normal level of culture shock is perfectly healthy and will pass; sometimes culture shock can affect us to an extreme degree, this what we want to avoid.
Normal Culture Shock
Missing friends and family back home
Feeling slightly uncomfortable in foreign situations
Looking for familiar situations/friends/language
Extreme Culture Shock
Feeling alone/abandoned/lost
Feelings of depression/fatigue/anger
Avoiding any sort of culture change
Because culture shock is such a normal part of any living/traveling abroad experience, it is best that we know what to expect and how to avoid extreme culture shock.
Culture shock has 5 stages:
- Honeymoon stage: You love everything and all relishing every moment in your new home!
- Crisis stage: You have faced some challenges (food, language, transport, daily tasks) and are not very happy with the outcome; your excitement has turned to a questionable confusion.
- Acceptance stage: You don’t see challenges as a crisis anymore, but merely hurdles to jump. Often humour and understanding come into play, and you feel better about the situation.
- Evaluation stage: You are comparing your old culture with the new, learning what you like and don’t like, and how to adjust.
- Reverse culture shock stage: This only happens when you return back to your old culture, and have to go through culture shock again. You have to readjust yourself to your ways, and it is common to feel sad and confused about the return.
How to avoid extreme culture shock: Be open with the way you are feeling with your family and friends back home. If you need to, speak with them often and share your new experiences with them. Make new friends who are also teaching English in Buenos Aires, share your experiences, good and bad. Don’t feel ashamed that you have good days and bad days, it is a normal part of living abroad, and everyone experiences it! Continue with your hobbies or activities that you did back home; play soccer, take photos, read books, etc, anything that you loved to do back home you can do here! If you need to speak to someone about the way you are feeling, reach out to your friends, family, teacher’s, or fellow TEFL students. People are very willing to help and share experiences.
Not yet a TEFL teacher? Check out our TEFL courses in Buenos Aires here!
