For others, the separation from home, family, and familiar surroundings compounds the impact, and culture shock is more deeply felt. The way you confront your new environment, your skills at interpersonal communication, emotional well-being, and willingness to learn new behavior or modify existing habits, as well as your understanding of change as a growth experience will all influence the impact of culture shock on your life. Not everyone will experience these aspects, and not everyone will experience them in the same order. You may go through this process several times, on an emotional roller coaster ranging from exciting highs to depressing lows, before you fully adjust to living and working in the United States. Everything seems exciting, and the experience seems like a big adventure.
People seem friendly and helpful.
You might be preoccupied with looking for similarities between the new culture and your home culture. The new sights and sounds will seem interesting and exotic and are generally viewed as positive. Sometimes newness can give way to the second stage, distress. A period of frustration, disorientation, or depression may set in. You may observe more and more unexplainable and disturbing differences.