I love it :) I love it not :( I love it :) !

So in a post below, I think I described my very first moments in Phnom Penh – the fake familiarity I experienced, coupled with the shocking sense of otherness, of not belonging. This like and dislike are the first two rapid phases of culture adjustment – as explained to me by an Iraqi friend of my roommates, during an evening where he cooked Iraqi food for a very electic group of people – a dutch girl, a morrocan, an american, and my indian-british self. So it seemed appropriate to be talking of such things during our fairly international evening…

The third phase is a more meaningful engagement with the place you live in, learning to balance the likes and the dislikes, the process of rendering the unfamiliar familiar, and I think I’m in the phase now. It took a while, perhaps because work started off with a few bumps, and I was plunged into my activities here, rather than easing in gradually. It reminds of the time when my parents literally threw me into the deep end of the pool when I was a scared four year old. The best way to learn, I guess. I learned fast then, and I’m learning faster now!

And it’s amazing to think back on my very first deer-in-the-headlights- morning walk in Phnom Penh, only two weeks ago, and consider how well I know that same street now – Sihanouk Blvd. I totally direct my tuk-tuk drivers, and have a fairly comprehensive mental map of the place. Knowing how to get where I want to get, to pay the appropriate price and not be ripped off completely is extremely liberating, and I can very quickly imagine a life for myself in this city. I realize that once the initial shock is over, I can reasonable adjust to living anywhere. I always forget this when I have been in familiar settings for a long time, but those initial moments when you wrestle with a place – those are the most essential reasons for travelling, for getting out of your comfort zone, and readjusting – ’cause when you do, the reward is amazing! To be able to know an unfamiliar place, to learn about other people’s experiences, and see how othere people live, it totally absolutely broadens your mind. It’s not just a cliche. This experience has really taught me something I find it easy to forget when I stop for a little while – that the life I envisage for myself is one of constant travel and exploration, and that I’m going to be totally not ok if that doesn’t happen for me…though I think it will : p [I do have to add that living in Phnom Penh is easy. I have pretty much everything I had in the states, it's just in a different setting, where there are some additional cultural issues...the real learning curve for me has been visiting and staying at the villages, which has been sort of a cultural adjustment of its own...but more details on that above]

Oh, and supposedly, the fourth phase of cultural adjustment would be when you return to your original home, and begin to miss your life in this previously unfamiliar place. I’m sure that will happen to me as well, but then I have a hard time with endings anyways…

Advertisement