Culture Shock Stages

Ayumi

The four stages of culture shock are same as adjustment which I've learned in American Studies class. The adjustment is like riding on the roller coaster, because you can be in high motivated and very depressed depends on each four stages such as Honeymoon, Culture Shock, Acceptance, and Integration. We experience, high emotion to very low emotion such as the stage of culture shock. The first stage of the culture shock is not Culture Shock, just "Honeymoon". We become very excited in this situation. Everything is new, interesting, and looks so wonderful!
Secondly, "Culture Shock" suddenly comes in this stage. Our emotional roller coaster keeps going but goes down very much.

The third stage "Acceptance" becomes better than the second stage. We feel more comfortable or everything is getting easier.

The final stage of these adjustments is "Integration". In this stage, we can spend the daily life in America as natural life in Japan.

Nowadays, I feel I'm in third stage,　"Acceptance ", because I've already cried without specific reasons and I'm really getting used to my lifestyle unlike in Japan. I would often go to bed at midnight, I don't stay up so late in Japan. However, I usually wake up until 2:00a.m. at MFWI. It's quite different in Japan and MFWI's sleeping style, but I don't have big trouble or sickness so far. I can accept this lifestyle only in Japan. I can get over my "Culture Shock" stage by keeping the same style and get used to. Sometimes it's difficult to keep exactly the same life because of the amount of our assignment for each day. That's why,　it's really important to keep our own pace in our life. Then we can stay healthy too.