Culture Shock is like... (文化震惊)

I was thinking about it, and I have decided that culture shock is *kind of like growing your hair out.

First, you make the move: you get your hair cut. It looks GREAT. You don't have a change for the future...you just want to make a change. People compliment you on the big move, ask how you feel. Everyone is excited for you. YOU are excited for you. You milk this feeling for a while, not even noticing how you can't put your hair in a bun anymore or style it as easily as you always have.

Before too long, though, the hair gets just a liiiiiiittle longer...and becomes a liiiiiiittle less easy to style. Less natural. It still looks good, feels good -- but YOU know that it's different. You figure eh, it looks good, I think. You're still milking that flashy new 'do, that exciting move. The only difference is that now you have to try a little harder to make things work.

Then...you reach the awkward length. You can't go a day without noticing the difference between how hard you have to work on your hair now versus how easy and exciting things were with the new 'do weeks or (for those slow hair growers) months ago. Every stinkin' day you have to try so hard to do anything with your hair -- just to make something work! Some days you don't even try. Other days you try and you get so frustrated in the process. It's. Just. Hard. Nothing seems to work. Your friends know you're having a hard time, so they try to help, give you tips, lend you some hair spray. You appreciate their help, even though you know this is your battle. They don't know your hair like you know your hair.

Thankfully, you soon reach this miraculous period where your hair looks...okay! You can put it in a small bun with a few bobby pins, or you can wear it half back and it looks pretty nice...why, you can even let it dry by itself and it won't look half bad. You don't have to try as hard because you know what to do now. You know what adjustments you can make when things aren't working. With this renewed confidence you have a renewed, positive attitude. With every day you get more and more used to your ever lengthening hair -- heck, you almost look forward to the challenge of working with more hair.

Over time, your hair ebbs and flows between awkward lengths and okay lengths. Some days you feel great and everything looks normal, feels natural. Other days you have to try a little harder, or even really hard. The hard days are never easy, but with each one you learn a bit more and you think more critically about how to make things work -- where to make adjustments, how to deal with the flyaways, and maybe when to make the next big change. No matter what, though, even on the most impossible, most painfully frustrating, difficult days when nothing seems to work, you can have confidence, and you can have hope; for with each passing moment, big or small, your hair is growing, and so are you.

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*I said "kind of." I.e., not exactly. Obviously there are some exceptions and plotholes to this theory -- "what if I'm balding?" "what if I have alopecia?" "what if I'm going for a Sinead O'Connor look?" -- but, as someone who got 10 inches cut immediately before moving to a foreign country four months ago, I am fairly amazed at the how the sequences of each "phenomenon" line up. 

And, if you were wondering, I am growing my hair out. 

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Mandarin Word of the Day: (head) hair
Chinese characters: 頭發 (頭 = head, chief, boss; 發 = to open up, to send out)
Pinyin pronunciation: tóufa