In a red Sunset my plane circled over Las Angeles. It was the last flight of many I took over the last six months while studying abroad in New Zealand and traveling in Australia and Fiji. Circling over the city was surreal. Looking at the city lights I was suddenly reminded of the night I left LA. It felt like I had only left a day ago.What was going on here? Why was I feeling like this? 36 hours earlier I was drunkenly attempting to save a cat on the rooftop of a Fijian resort with a millionaire banker. Before that I was in Sydney witnessing the finale of Australian idol. And before that I was exploring every possible square inch of New Zealand that I could. It was all swirling in my head at once, but it was all starting to become less vivid.

I started to prepare myself for what was to come, reminding myself of what I would be missing. No more saving cats with bankers. No more people calling me “mate.” No more cool accents. No more people using the word “pissed” to describe being drunk, joked about, or angry. No more mindless extreme sports, or hiking around volcanoes. No more kiwis curiously asking about “the fat people.” No more tropical beaches half an hour away from snow-covered Alps.

I felt I had been dreaming, and from the time I got off that plane to the time I got to my home, I was reminded of the things that I hadn’t seen in awhile. Hello big trucks. Hello southern accents. Hello interstate. Hello obesity epidemic. Hello Britney. I found myself suddenly fascinated by all these things, but the experience abroad was fading fast.

It’s called “shoe boxing” and it’s a typical symptom of culture shock. Your experience seems more distant as the familiarity of home takes over. The Australearn (my program’s) Alumni Handbook states that, “Many fear there their experience will somehow become compartmentalized like souvenirs or photo albums kept in a box.”

Senior Colleen Mcglory also experienced the feeling of “shoe boxing” upon returning from London. “You still have memories of your experience once you return home, but you have nothing to trigger those memories in a real way,” said Mcglory, “Your home is also full of things that trigger memories of before you left. This makes the transition really abrupt, as if you’re waking up from a dream.”

“Shoe boxing” is just a part Culture shock. Other symptoms include simply having a completely changed perspective on your home country. Senior Chelsea Simpson experienced this after returning from doing an intensive sustainable living program in Central America.

“It’s like coming back to the same place but wearing different glasses,” said Simpson. “Things filter in differently. I feel like I understand what the US stands for on a deeper level.”

This semester many students have returned to Guilford from places all over the world. Certainly most, if not all of them, have felt the strange feeling of culture shock. The good news is that none of them are alone in it.