My Essay "Culture Shock"

Culture Shock

Culture shock is a problem we face up to everyday, especially when we travel abroad. Culture shock makes us losing all the familiar signs and symbols of the social intercourse. To deal with this, we must know the causes and effects of culture shock.

The most important cause of culture shock was misunderstanding native languages. When we visit a foreign country, we will find it difficult to understand the language, even when we know the language, that still makes us misunderstanding because peoples use slangs that we don’t know what it means.

The next reason of culture shock was being unfamiliar with new food in the foreign country. As the Indonesian peoples, usually we eat the main food “rice”, meanwhile when we go to other country especially in Europe, we will be difficult to find rice because, there, the main food is bread.

The third cause was transportation. Many countries have different transportation and how to pay it. In Indonesia, when we ride bus, the assistant of driver will take the pay, but in Singapore, we just pay by using card, and they don’t have assistant of driver.

After that, because of different weather, it also can make culture shock for us who usually live in the country that have two seasons, meanwhile when we live in foreign country, we will find other seasons like winter, summer, spring, autumn.

These four causes that sometime become a problem for us, especially when we travel abroad. And the effect of culture shock makes us confused so much, afraid, difficult to sleep, and have health problems.

As a result of culture shock, we can feel afraid. We must be careful when we talk with someone there because we don’t want to make them disturb with our words.

Therefore, different food makes us get health problems, such as stomachache because the taste was bad on our tongue or on our stomach. And wa cann’t sleep enough because of the weather that is not good for our body.

Nevertheless, it’s not so difficult to solve these problems. We must try to understand and get acquainted with host customs and food instead of complaint, we would adjust ourself to the new environment. Becoming friendly with native people, getting used to new food will make us feel more comfortable and cosy, and we must try to search information as much as possible.

In conclusion, culture shock should always be studied carefully so that people can feel easier to adjust to new environment and haven’t to meet culture shock.