Culture Stress

The experience of living in abroad has it's own little version of the stages of grief, made up of the following : Honeymoon, Frustration, Understanding, and Acclimation.  Much like the stages of grief, the stages shift around quite a bit, and you don't necessarily always progress through them linearly.

More and more, the Honeymoon stage seems long gone.  No surprise and no distress about it, but the "everything is fun because it's new" part of the experience has just kind of faded away.  Most days I spend shifting between Frustration and Understanding.

Today, however, seems to be solidly Frustrating.  I've said it before, but ultimately everything here is more difficult.  First, because of the obvious issue of the massive language barrier, and second because everything is just naturally more difficult in one of the poorest parts of a developing country.  After awhile, there's a lot of stress involved in doing seemingly simple tasks and that stress can get to be a little much.  

I think the only thing that can possibly make me feel better is if I go out and find a hamburger.  Fortunately, I know a place.