Experience Albania: Travel, Pictures, History, Culture

According to studies, I’m about to hit a low point. I’m about to dip down and wallow for a while, in a bit of distress, due to my move and adaptation into a new, foreign culture.
No worries, however, as culture shock certainly a big part of this experience.
As long as I embrace culture shock with honesty, I will be fine.
There are things about Albanian values, behaviors, and the environment that contribute to my culture shock on a daily basis. To identify and embrace them is the best coping strategy I have thus far - we’ll see what else I come up with!

“We are all creatures of our own culture.
As we grow up, we nail together a raft of familiarity that helps us ride the waves of change in our own society.
Year after year, plank by plank, we have unconsciously hammered out a coping strategy for life.
It may be a rough-hewn vessel, but we have each mastered the cultural cues for our own sea of life.
We even enjoy scanning the broad horizons of this sea as long as our feet are firmly planted on the raft of what we know as “normal.”

Culture shock” sums up all the complicated emotions that we feel when the planks of our raft begin to separate. The familiar slips out from under our feet. Up until this time, the planks of the familiar were so firmly fastened together that we were unconscious of them.
now, as they float away, we look longingly after each splinter of wood.“