Today was challenging

This post is sections from my "Art of Crossing Cultures" book. It sums up a lot of how I'm feeling.

The book goes on to talk about routines and how routines are actually things that don't take much thinking so that you can move on to higher order thinking.

"The lifeblood of routines is the known and the familiar. Needless to say, when you move to a new country, where nothing is known and familiar, your routines get mightily disrupted. Suddenly, nothing...is a routine. The loss of routines means the time and energy that were available for higher order, more sophisticated tasks now goes to basic coping and survival functions. With the minutiae of everyday life now demanding much of your conscious attention, {these higher order functions} either get put aside or take much longer to accomplish....The loss of routines hits you at your core. You expect to have to learn how to do new things overseas and even new was of doing familiar things, but you may be surprised to discover that you have to learn to do things you normally do without thinking. "

"A related problem is being so far away from family and friends. There's the homesickness dimension, genuinely missing close friends and loved ones, and there's also the matter of not having the support and encouragement such people offer us during difficult times. As you face the difficulties of those early months abroad, you need the kind of unconditional acceptance and support only close friends and family members can provide; you need people who will listen to your tirades about the country and the natives without judging, people with whom you can fall apart without being embarrassed or worrying about what they might think."

"A few hours of interacting with relative strangers, whether from your own or the host country, will leave you as tired as a whole day of dealing with people you already know."

Time for bed-