While many of you are (or are soon to be) in the arrival process to Sweden, I’ve recently arrived in the US for a brief visit home. ‘Home’ for me is a small town of about 10,000 people on the west coast of Michigan. Since arriving, I’ve admittedly experienced a bit of reverse culture shock.
Like most KTH international students, I’ve spent most of the past two years in Sweden – my last visit home was one year ago. Naturally, it’s amazing to reunite with family and friends and nestle into this small, still familiar community that I was raised in. But the process of settling into what is a very different place from Stockholm has also made me reflect on how my sense of “normal” has changed.
How I travel, what I buy at the grocery store, what I expect when interacting with strangers, what I do in my free time, the languages I hear around me, the type of space I live in, the news I follow, where my friends come from – in so many little ways I’ve adapted my lifestyle in Sweden.
For the most part, I think I’ve become a more conscious person. Built-in cues, from separating my recycling to seeing how many emissions I save when buying a train ticket, have strengthened the connection between my personal consumption and its impacts. Sweden has provided many little lessons like this, and I’m appreciating it anew from an environment where the cues are noticeably different.
To acknowledge how Sweden has positively impacted me isn’t necessarily to say that where I come from has it all wrong. A second year abroad has also helped me to better understand the complexity behind Swedish culture and history. I think that’s the beauty of an international experience — learning how things are done differently and coming to appreciate the contributing factors.
It’s something I’ll be reflecting on during my time home, before I head back to Stockholm in September.
// Claire