F2F Class Notes (Ben) [R]

Grammar

My colleagues and I went out last night = polite

Me and my colleagues went out last night = more casual

Vocabulary

a stint = time spent doing a particular activity

nurture = protecting and caring for a child or an idea growing
Personality depends on both nature and nurture.

crave = to have a strong desire for something
After 3 years in China, I really crave going back home.

anxiety = the feeling of being anxious
I had a lot of anxiety after losing my job.

a margin = a narrow strip of space that is separated from the rest of a sheet of paper
marginalize = to cut someone out from society
Many Muslims are marginalized in European countries.
Marginalization of foreigners creates closed communities.
When I first arrived to this new school, I was marginalized and couldn’t make friends.

Reverse culture shock can be the worst thing about returning from a stint abroad, but nurturing a continuing relationship with your expat country can help in surprising ways.

Zoey Ilouz, a native Californian, has been an expatriate in Israel twice.

Keen to experience her father’s country, she first moved there post-university (and post-break-up) to work for a non-profit. After three years she moved back to the US, in part because she craved the comforts of home.  But repatriation, at the time to New York City, wasn’t smooth sailing.

“Even simple things felt overwhelming and different,” she says of her initial return to the US. “It’s my country and I felt that I shouldn’t feel strange and out of place here.”

She missed her life in Israel, her friends, community, food, even the buses – and within six months she was on a flight back to the Middle East.

Now, at 30, Ilouz has decided to return to America and will be moving to Seattle to work for Hillel, a Jewish organisation that arranges trips to Israel. Based on her prior experience, she’s apprehensive about reverse culture shock, and she’s especially nervous about moving to a new city, where she won’t have a support network.

“My friends in America don’t understand why I’m having so much anxiety about it. I expect I’m going to feel like I don’t fit in for a while.”

Transitioning home

Ilouz is not alone. Many returning expats, or ‘repatriates’,  find it difficult to settle back into their old life. They often suffer feelings of marginalisation, self-doubt and even depression, says Craig Storti, an expert in repatriation and author of The Art of Coming Home.

Research shows that repats often experience more intense culture shock returning home than that which they initially experienced when they moved abroad. In one survey, 80% of Japanese, 71% of Finnish, 64% of Dutch and 60% of American managers indicated they had a harder time readjusting to their home country than their host country abroad.

Pronunciation

country = cun – try

• “I’m a country member.”
• “I remember”

America = [əˈmɛrikə]

author =  [‘ɔθər]