Cross-Cultural Adjustment Quotes

I think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here [in America], and be happy.

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, 'Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.' Since then, I started to think differently.

Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America.

After I finished my degree in India in 1980, I came to the U.S. to get a master's, and I was teaching quantum physics to freshmen. As I got my bearings as to what goes on in labs, I understood that to teach, you have to learn.

When I was 12 years old, living in Cairo, my parents enrolled me in the American school. Most of the Americans there appeared oddly stifled, determined to remain, if not physically then sentimentally, back in the United States.

I grew up in Venezuela, and when I was 14-years-old, my parents decided to sell everything and come to America. Five of us lived in a two bedroom house. It wasn't a sad truth, it was just the way it was [at the time]. That feeling is so universal for every immigrant.

I was born in Senegal in 1996. My mom moved to New York when I was two years old, so I was raised by my aunt back home.

I was 14 in Barcelona, and when I initially went there, I didn't see my mum for six months and my dad for four months. Australia is far from Spain, but I don't remember how long or how short the days felt. I think what was most difficult for my parents was that if anything went wrong, they couldn't say, 'OK, we'll be there in a couple of hours.'

I probably felt most out of place as a young kid growing up in Sri Lanka. My mental world was somewhere else, partly because of reading and daydreaming.

It’s a matter of time; you adapt to the different culture and different way of life. Human beings are adaptable.