For someone who doesn’t like change, I’ve faced a lot of it in my life. I guess, like all my phobias, I’ve forced myself to face it straight on.
When I was 22 years old, I made a life-changing decision and set off to work seasons overseas. I told my friends that I didn’t know how long I would be away for, but I wouldn’t return until I felt I’d achieved what I needed to. It turned out to be almost six years, and during that time I had to deal with a lot of changes. Different cultures, foreign languages, moving ‘home’ sometimes as frequently as every week, sharing a bedroom, not having an address….
The biggest change I have had to face, however, has been moving back to Wales. I’d been living here for about four years before I went abroad, and although I’m not Welsh I figured that, being British, fitting in back at home on my return would be easy in comparison to moving to a foreign country. In July this year I will have been back in Cardiff for five years, and I’m still struggling to deal with some of the changes. Go figure?
This is my entry for this week’s Photo Challenge: Change. Click here to see more entries.
Sasieology 
It is funny how, as humans, we want to cling to the familiar. Life needs to be lived, we need to embrace the changes while we cling to the constants.
Beautifully put. I couldn’t agree more 🙂
I actually find reverse culture shock to be harder to deal with than experiencing new cultures. We tend to have rose-tinted glasses on when we think about home, and it’s hard when we actually go home to realize that it doesn’t quite live up to the ideal.
I definitely agree. I think when we return ‘home’ we assume we can relax. When drivers catch the ferry from the UK to France (where they drive on the opposite side of the road to us), they are more likely to drive on the wrong side of the road when they return to the UK because they relax and don’t concentrate as much.