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           Some people say that when you first return home after living in a foreign land, you experience a second culture shock. It has been a little over a week since I have returned home from China. I knew I needed to write a post that would serve to sort of close that portion of an amazing experience, but it has taken me longer than I expected. The whole first week that I was home, it felt like half of my head was still in China, and I think a part of it still lingers there.

Somehow the days here seem significantly longer, and its funny how easily you forget what a real sky looks like until you’re standing in the middle of strip-mall parking lot, gazing up at the perfectly textured clouds above you. The skies I saw in China always had a diluted milky-ness to them, even on the bluest of days. But at night, the constant white of the sky served as a canvas for the lights below, emitting a burnt orange and red glow that seemed more magnificent and mysterious than any sunset I had witnessed Stateside.

I have wondered if it was strange that I spend so much time analyzing the skies of the places I go to. I remember writing about my first impression of Shanghai’s polluted skies in one of my earliest posts, and still dwelling on them long after I had finished writing. The sky looms over everything and all of us, and its expanse is immeasurable to the human gazer. But the sky, more so than the watches on our wrists, serve as our measure of passing time; the days that turned into night, the clouds that turned into sun, the shorter days that got longer. Those days when Shanghai was still a new city and rain fell from the sky almost every day, until it was replaced by sun and warmth some weeks later. I’m not sure how long it took, I wasn’t counting, but that was time passing.  

Time is a constant thing, but the human brain can easily distort it. I remember reading an article somewhere that explained why experiencing summers as a little kid seems so much longer than experiencing them as an adult. When you’re a little kid, everything is still new to you. Time slows down and summer feels longer because you’re brain has to process all the new experiences. But as an adult, every day begins to turn into a routine, and life in general isn’t so new to you anymore. Back here, at home, the days may be physically longer, but I remember the days feeling longer when I was away.

I’m not sure if what I’m currently experiencing is a second culture shock, because everything here, even the sky, is too familiar to me.  I wish it were culture shock again—to be able to experience the surprise and curiosity that comes with a new land, to slow time down a little bit. Maybe it’s the restlessness of my nature, or the brain’s hunger to always process new things, to wander somewhere I haven’t been before. I know I will return to China in the future, if not the near future. And when I go back there, I may see some familiar things, but also things that have changed to the point where they are unrecognizable. A second culture shock, I could call it, because China, too, has a restless nature.