Three months into inhabiting a foreign place together and we're doing alright. No over-dosing on goulash or buying a plane ticket in a fit of homesickness. Lots of smiles all around.
However, culture shock is a very real phenomenon and we're aware that the "honeymoon" period we're having will probably crash in the next few months - right during winter.
My school has been fantastic about providing opportunities to connect with other expats; on Nov. 9, we're going to its annual "Can-American Thanksgiving Celebration." It also helps that we're packing our weekends so we don't go into isolation/frustration mode.
Last night, good buddy Logos had a housewarming party in his new digs, which is a flat in a 16th century tower where Edward Kelly, King Rudolf II's alchemist, lived.
And the night before that, we were in the Únětický Brewery in a village outside of Prague, where colleague K and his wife A and their two kids live. The building, built around 1710, served as a storage place for ice from nearby ponds and operated as a brewery until the Communists shut it down in 1951. It reopened in 2011 and is seriously cool. K and A moved near the brewery from teaching in Kenya the last few years. Now THAT would be culture shock!
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