When an individual enters a foreign cultural environment, the familiar signs and symbols that allow normal functioning and social interaction are gone. In order to adjust successfully one must understand the socially created system of hierarchically structured contextual units within which individual units of action are interpreted. These can be interpreted at three interrelated levels: the structural level (friendships, marriage, family, work teams, and so forth), the situational level (greeting, working, eating, fighting and so forth), and the meaning level (compliments, criticisms, requests, attraction, and so forth). To successfully adjust to a different cultural environment, one must understand the role of relationships and communication networks of the structural level, the rules that govern action chains on the situational level, and the form and content of relational and identity messages of the meaning level. (HOD)