Global Poverty Monitor

The issue of reverse culture shock still worries me, especially since I have had such an amazing time on this trip. It would be a lot easier to return home to my normal life if I hadn’t enjoyed my time away and had been counting down the time to go, as I suspected I would. I remember before I left, someone asked me how I was feeling about going on the trip. This was during one of the days when I was worrying about it a lot, and I said that I wanted the experience of the trip but didn’t actually want to go on the trip itself. I likened it to when you go shopping to buy a fridge. I said that when you want a fridge, you don’t go out and go through the hassle of choosing it and paying for it and bringing it home and setting it up for those experiences alone – but that you go through all that simply because you want the fridge. In other words, at the time if I could have woken up the next day with all the knowledge and understanding that I expected to bring home with me after the trip, but without having to do the trip itself, I would have done it.

But now I realize just how wrong my thinking was. In a lot of ways, this trip itself has been more beneficial to me than the knowledge and understanding that I got from it. I have learnt how to travel internationally, how to live out of a suitcase, how to live in a world where everyone speaks a different language to you, how to handle foreign currency with confidence, and all while living with 7 complete strangers. I have learnt how to look after myself, how to be by myself without alienating myself from the group.