culture stress

"You feel tired, anxious, discouraged, isolated, angry, and homesick but cannot think of any reason why you should feel that way."

"Culture stress is the stress that occurs when you change to a different way of living in a new culture. It is what you experience as you move beyond understanding the culture to making it your own so that you accept the customs, becoming comfortable and at home with them. If you are trying to become a real part of the culture, to become bicultural, you are likely to experience culture stress as you assimilate some of the conventions to the point that they feel natural to you."

"Culture stress is the adjustment stage in which people accept the new environment, adopting new ways of thinking and doing things so that they feel like they belong to the new culture. This takes years, and some missionaries never complete it."

~from What Missionaries Ought to Know about Culture Stress by Ronald Koteskey

This is why I've been feeling so out of whack the last few weeks...