I first heard about the four stages of culture shock during an orientation session at Southern Cross University.
I had just started my Master's degree on the Gold Coast.
By then, I had already been in Australia for about four months.
But in some ways, it felt like I had only just arrived.
I had spent my first three months in Melbourne, staying close to family and giving myself time to settle into Australia. There was still change, of course, but I had a support system nearby. I could adjust gradually.
Then I moved to the Gold Coast.
That was different.
I remember seeing the water.
Crystal clear.
Bright.
Almost unreal.
I thought:
This is love at first sight.
And honestly, for a while, it was.
New university.
New city.
Beautiful beaches.
A completely different rhythm of life.
Everything felt possible.
Then, during orientation, someone explained that people living in another country often move through four broad stages:
honeymoon, frustration, adjustment and adaptation.
I remember listening and thinking the first stage sounded very familiar.
What I did not realise yet was that the others would too.
Season One: Spring, the honeymoon
The honeymoon stage is easy to recognise.
Everything is interesting because everything is new.
You notice the architecture.
The supermarkets.
The accents.
The food.
The weather.
The way people dress.
Even taking public transport feels like part of the experience.
You photograph things locals stopped noticing years ago.
For me, the Gold Coast made this stage particularly easy.
The beaches really were that beautiful.
The lifestyle looked exactly like the version of Australia people imagine from overseas.
Sunshine.
Ocean.
Outdoor life.
People from everywhere.
There was energy in starting again.
You feel brave because you moved.
Independent because you are figuring things out.
Optimistic because the future is still mostly possibility.
And when people back home ask:
How is Australia?
the answer is easy.
Amazing.
Because at that stage, much of it genuinely is.
But spring does not last forever.
Season Two: Winter, when difference becomes work
At some point, the things that were interesting because they were different become difficult for exactly the same reason.
The novelty wears off.
Now you need to function.
Not as a tourist.
Not as somebody visiting for a few weeks.
As somebody building a life.
This is when small things become surprisingly exhausting.
Understanding paperwork.
Finding work.
Learning how people communicate professionally.
Working out what a lecturer expects.
Building friendships from zero.
Understanding jokes five seconds after everyone else has laughed.
Trying to sound like yourself in a language that is not your first.
Missing family.
Missing food.
Missing conversations where you don't have to explain context.
Sometimes nothing dramatic happens.
That is what makes this stage difficult to describe.
There may be no single crisis.
You are simply tired of having to think about things that used to happen automatically.
And then something tiny becomes the final straw.
A confusing form.
A bad shift at work.
A joke you misunderstand.
A phone call home.
A meal that reminds you of somewhere else.
Culture shock is not always dramatic.
Sometimes it is just accumulated friction.
The dangerous comparison
This is often the stage when people begin comparing everything.
Back home, we do it this way.
People here are too direct.
People here aren't direct enough.
The food is better at home.
The service is better here.
People at home are warmer.
People here are more independent.
This country is more organised.
That country is more social.
Comparison is natural.
But if you stay there too long, it becomes a trap.
Because you are comparing a country you know deeply with a country you are still learning.
Home has context.
The new place has surfaces.
You know why people behave the way they do at home.
In another culture, you often only see the behaviour.
That is when difference can easily become judgement.
It took time for me to learn that something being unfamiliar does not automatically mean it is worse.
Sometimes it is simply unfamiliar.
Season Three: Autumn, you stop fighting every difference
I think adjustment begins quietly.
There is rarely a morning when you wake up and announce:
Excellent. I am culturally adjusted now.
You simply notice that things require less energy.
You know which bus to take.
You know where to shop.
You understand the joke.
You have people you can message.
You stop converting every price into your home currency.
You know what somebody means when they use a particular expression.
You know which problems are actually problems and which are simply how things work here.
Most importantly, you stop needing everything to make sense according to the rules you arrived with.
That does not mean you agree with everything.
It means you develop context.
You begin choosing which parts of the new culture you want to adopt and which parts of yourself you want to protect.
That is a much healthier form of adaptation than simply trying to become like everybody around you.
Belonging usually arrives before you notice it
There is a strange moment that happens after living somewhere for a while.
Someone visiting asks you for directions.
And you know the answer.
You recommend a restaurant without checking Google.
You complain about roadworks like a local.
You have routines.
People expect you somewhere.
There are places attached to memories rather than novelty.
The city has stopped being a destination.
It has become part of your life.
I think this is one reason community became so important to me during my years working with international students.
Belonging rarely comes from being told:
You belong here.
It comes from participation.
Someone knows your name.
You are responsible for something.
You contribute.
Somebody asks for your advice because you understand the place better than they do.
Eventually, you become the person helping someone who has just arrived.
That is when you realise how far you have moved.
Not geographically.
Emotionally.
Season Four: A second spring, adaptation
I call the final stage a second spring because I do not think adaptation means returning to the person you were at the beginning.
You are not.
The first spring was exciting because everything was new.
The second is different.
The place is no longer new.
You are.
You have absorbed things without noticing.
Your communication changes.
Your expectations change.
You become comfortable moving between different groups.
You recognise cultural assumptions that once felt invisible to you.
Sometimes your sense of humour changes.
Sometimes your idea of home changes.
And sometimes returning to the country you came from produces its own form of culture shock.
People expect the same version of you to come back.
But living elsewhere has added something.
This is where the neat four-stage diagram starts becoming less neat.
You do not finish adaptation.
You keep changing.
Then I moved countries again
Years later, moving from Australia to Spain reminded me that experience does not make you immune to culture shock.
I had done this before.
I knew what it felt like to start again.
Surely I would be better at it.
And I was.
But Spain was not Australia.
The language was different.
The rhythm of life was different.
Professional expectations were different.
Bureaucracy was different.
Social life was different.
I could bring the resilience I had built in Australia.
I could not bring an Australian instruction manual and expect Spain to follow it.
That was another lesson:
Adaptability is portable. Adaptation is local.
You can become good at being new.
But you still have to learn each place.
The four stages are useful, but real life is messier
I still remember that university orientation because the framework gave language to something I would later experience.
But I no longer imagine the stages as four tidy boxes.
People move backwards.
A difficult week can make somebody who has lived abroad for years suddenly feel completely foreign again.
Going home for a month and returning can reopen things you thought were settled.
A breakup, job loss, illness or visa problem can change your relationship with the country overnight.
Some people never experience a dramatic honeymoon stage.
Others remain excited for years.
Some adapt professionally but never socially.
Some build beautiful communities abroad and still eventually decide home is where they need to be.
There is no correct timeline.
The value of the four stages is not predicting exactly what will happen.
It is reminding you that what you are feeling may be part of a process rather than proof you have made a terrible mistake.
That distinction can matter enormously.
What actually helped me stay resilient
Looking back, resilience had much less to do with always being positive than I once thought.
It was more practical.
Build routines before you feel settled
When everything else is unfamiliar, routine gives the week some structure.
A gym.
A regular café.
A walk.
Cooking.
A weekly phone call home.
Small repeated things can make a new place feel less chaotic.
Find community, but don't wait for it to find you
Belonging requires participation.
Join something.
Volunteer.
Attend the event.
Accept the invitation.
Message someone first.
You cannot always think your way out of loneliness.
Sometimes you need to physically go somewhere where people are.
Stay connected to home without living there remotely
Calling family matters.
Keeping your language matters.
Cooking familiar food matters.
But there is a difference between staying connected to home and spending your entire life abroad looking backwards.
If every evening is spent online with people thousands of kilometres away, it becomes harder to build relationships with the people around you.
You cannot always think your way out of loneliness. Sometimes you need to physically go somewhere where people are.
Learn the language, even badly
This matters enormously in Spain.
Language is not just a professional skill.
It is access.
To humour.
Friendship.
Neighbourhoods.
Culture.
Confidence.
Independence.
You do not need perfect grammar before you start participating.
You need a willingness to sound imperfect for a while.
That can be uncomfortable.
It is also part of the price of belonging.
Do not confuse difficulty with failure
This may be the most important one.
There were moments when international life felt hard.
That did not mean the decision to move was wrong.
Difficulty is information.
Sometimes it tells you something needs to change.
Sometimes it simply tells you that change itself is difficult.
Learning the difference takes time.
Resilience is not becoming unaffected
When people talk about resilience, it can sound as though the goal is to eventually stop feeling homesick, confused or uncomfortable.
I don't think that is realistic.
Resilience is not reaching a point where nothing affects you.
It is knowing what to do when something does.
You call someone.
You ask for help.
You give yourself time.
You change your routine.
You find your community.
You stop pretending everything is amazing simply because other people think living abroad must be amazing.
And then you try again tomorrow.
Home becomes plural
Perhaps the strangest thing about living far from home is that eventually the word itself becomes difficult.
Vietnam is home.
Australia became home.
And now I am building another version of home in Spain.
Those statements do not cancel each other.
Maybe that is what adaptation eventually becomes.
Not replacing one identity with another.
Expanding it.
The student sitting in that Southern Cross University orientation session had been in Australia for only four months.
He had just arrived on the Gold Coast.
He had seen the water and thought it was love at first sight.
He had no idea what the next several years would contain.
The opportunities.
The difficult days.
The people.
The work.
The communities.
The version of himself that would eventually leave Australia and begin the process again somewhere else.
If I could tell him one thing, it would probably be this:
Enjoy the honeymoon.
Take the photographs.
Swim in the ridiculous blue water.
Be excited.
But when winter comes, don't panic.
It does not mean the story is over.
Sometimes it just means you have stopped visiting.
And started living.