Shocking reality of a culture shock, you know?

It should be how you feel the first time you go to the grocery store and realize that you’ll be paying $10 for every gallon of milk you buy for the next two years…and that you will be buying it from a store in which rats run amok and the refrigerated section hasn’t been refrigerated in years, if ever.

But no, that’s not how it works.  Those first moments are never as bad as you think they will be and, in fact, you might even revel in them.  I know I have.  The books call it the “honeymoon phase,” I call it manic denial.

You so desperately want to avoid feeling like a narrow-minded scaredy-cat.  You so badly don’t want to spend the next two years hating your life every time you walk out the front door.  So you put on your brave face, you post tongue-in-cheek “can you believe this?” pictures on your blog, and you tell all of your new friends at Post that yes the traffic is a little terrifying crazy but the food is just so amazing and you are adjusting just fine.  Really, everything is fine here, we’re all fine here, how are you?

You tell yourself and your concerned spouse (who gets to go off to work everyday to an office full of other Americans, consistant internet access and made-in-the-USA staplers) that you’ve got this living-overseas-giant-life-change-everything-is-completely-upside-down-and-different-thing totally under control.

And for a while, you do, you really do.  You can pat yourself on the back for mastering the rudimentary language skills, haggling skills and thick skin necessary to navigate your new everyday life.  The traffic that was once so terrifying fades into the background and you learn how to cross the street with the practiced, death-defying, nonchalant attitude of a local.