I agree with Expatbrit. His/her insights make a lot of sense.
Most immigrants I've met (including myself) go through a bit of this to one extent or another because of the magnitude of starting a new life from scratch.
I find this to be particularly true, even when moving from one place to another within the US - and/or even when moving from one place to another within a particular state. In California alone, I've lived in the SF Bay Area, the Sacramento area, Orange County (LA), the CA Central Valley, the Monterey Bay Area, and the Lake Tahoe region. Even within one state, every single place was different - most notably to me, in culture and attitudes. Without naming which area I am referring to, I'll just say that one particular region had some of the snootiest and "surface" people I've ever met in my life and I was miserable there. In other regions, my day-to-day life was very much influenced by the natural surroundings. When I look back on one place in particular, I still smile - it was the most fun place I've ever lived in my life and is where I met and married my husband. Yet another place is where I call "home" and wouldn't want to leave for anything - even with some of the kooky laws which drive up the prices of everything in this state.
That said, I've also lived in Missouri, which is as different from CA as you can get. The weather is completely different, the economy is better (at least when I was there), and the people are wonderful. I never could get used to some of the laws they had there, and the infrastructure didn't make much sense to me, only because it is an older state which had to get very creative in order to update. And the pace - even in the large suburban area of Kansas City, was so much more relaxed than in CA.
In other words, I agree with the following statement also made by Expatbrit:
If you are unhappy living in the US/Canada/Uk etc, you are unlikely to be happier somewhere else.
It's all about attitude, and your own ability to adapt.
Someone once told me "You can't change everyone's ideas to fit yours, you can only change the way you react to someone else's ideas." I believe this to be true. We CHOOSE the way we look at where we live or don't live - whether we are looking at the weather, economy, people who live there, natural surroundings or political climate. It's what we do with the way we feel about it that makes the difference. If we are unhappy about where we live, we have choices. We can choose to move somewhere else where we *might* be happier; we can choose to stay where we are and piss and moan and engage in heated political debates which only serve to further polarize political ideas; or we can choose to accept that no matter how persuasive we think we are, we're never going to be able to get everyone to agree with our particular ideas. With that in mind, we can also choose to use the energy we would normally use to piss and moan, and channel it towards positive ACTIONS and DEEDS which can bring about the change we desire. Trading nasty words is NOT going to solve anything; but acting on the changes we would like to see can much more peacefully affect the outcome we desire.
My 2,
growedup
