I am unsure how I will be affected by culture shock, though I will invariably will be. One hand, I feel like I have a good handle on the 'ropes' of moving somewhere far from home without knowing anybody there. When I left for college I moved to a place much different than my home--the Southeastern US. Everything about this place was weird and foreign, and I had to adjust to that. While that all is true, of course moving to Thailand will be a completely different kind of culture shock. I'll be in a new country, with a new language, new laws, and a completely new way of living. I haven't even really begun to comprehend how different things may be.
As far as homesickness goes, I know that I have a handle on that. Freshman year was really hard for me, and I learned the amount of time I needed each week to dedicate to catching up with my family. For the most part, since I'll have a working phone, communication to back home might not be as hard for me as it is for other people studying abroad. The only major change is the time difference: 12 hours different than TN, and 17 from Hawaii. That will make phone calls and getting timely responses to texts more difficult I'm sure.
I could see myself getting very worked up when I run into cultural differences issues. I can imagine getting mad, not at others, but myself and become more closed off. All of my worries around this (which there are a lot of them at times) I hinge on having a good support system of other international students at my university, and my coordinator to help me work through difficulties.
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