THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY
Sometimes I walk down the street and it hits me, "My God, I am in Romania. This is my life." for being far away now feels as commonplace as a McDonald's Bigmac, no big deal. Then something happens at home, someone close to you becomes ill, you see a picture of your pregnant best friend, another friend shares the details of her upcoming wedding and suddenly you are thousand miles away, and the language on the street is as foreign as the first day that you arrived. It is at those moments that I don't know where I am. My head is not where my feet seem to be and my heart, well my heart is the victim torn in two. Maybe that is a bit dramatic, but it is impossible to explain this feeling any better way. Lately Beth and I have been talking about our future plans, what will we do after these crazy two years come to a close. We plan and dream of bumming around the world. We worry and argue about whether to save money or just spend it all and then we talk nostalgically of the good old days in year one when Romania was the adventure, the only plan. We wax melodramatic and declare our love of our adoptive country and in the next breath we bitch about our kids and out hate of pedogogy. But we never can quite decide where we are in this whole mess. As we try to recreate Thanksgiving and christmas to our fondest Statesside memories and we buy the fancy new imports as a treat, we simultaneously adopt Romanian habits. I can now feel the wind from the open window and door (current) in my house getting me sick. Beth has adopted a rice bag as her newest form of luggage. Ciprian , our Romanian friend and cross-cultural expert says that we are adapting all wrong. We have picked up, according to him, all the wrong habits. We have become like strange foreign accented bunicas (grandmothers from the countryside). Therefore fitting in neither with the locals our age (I refuse to like Eminem, although i have grown fond of Robbie Williams) or the truly the country folk whose taste for pig skin, pork fat, and pate will never quite appeal to my too Jewish, too American palate. So we are the misfits of Romania, and the expats of America. There is a Peace Corps proverb if i may call it, which goes...PCVs come back from Asia hopefull, they come back from Africa hospitable, and they come back from Eastern Europe needing pyscho-therapy. We shall see.
Yesterday I felt more than a million miles away. I found out that my friend is ill. She had to have surgery and will have to have physical therapy to learn to walk all over again. "Beam me up Scottie!" Beam me back. I am sorry that i am not there. I am sorry that my support has to be through emails. I am sorry that my friend doesn't have me when she needs me...for she has always been right there when i needed her. Who ever said that you can't be two places at once has obviously never llived abroad.
nina