On the Way to Adaptation

Today is the fifth of October.  Today I am wearing shorts and a long sleeve shirt—the sleeves are rolled up; the sleeves are a ruse.  I’m inside Costa Coffee, which is currently blasting the air conditioning because it’s hovering between 26-28 degrees Celsius outside.  Summer weather, really.  And I have a nostalgia for home.  Not an aching, urging, blatant one.  More a gnawing sense of deprivation—one part need for autumn, one part need for being understood, one part missing the people and places I know and love, the people who know me and get me. 

I’ve been told this is normal.  It’s a dip in the graph of the experience of expat life as illustrated in an apt article found here: While You're Away

I think I'm in the midst of the upcurve of culture shock and coupled with: pictures of CMU homecoming weekend on Facebook; the impending plethora of crap this work week promises to be; and the fallout of the end of a week of holiday, I was always bound to feel a bit meh. 

Sometimes it's hard to actualise that every day in a foreign country is not an adventure and that real life gets in the way.  I must remind myself that I am allowed low moments in the far flung adventure I signed myself up for.  

Fortunately, my fabulous friends help me put things in perspective.  My good friend Ian recently emailed and, to paraphrase, reality checked me: 'Just think what you would have said to me in this email if you had chosen to stay in your old job??’ 

This is true.  I don’t regret this decision.  Most days, I’m a little bit in love with it. But not like I thought I would be.  I’m not an international school lifer, not at this point, anyway. I finally, finally, finally, have an acute sense of home.  This ‘home’ isn’t my home country but nevertheless, it’s my chosen reality.  I miss London—snuggling up in pubs, ridiculous accents, students with bad attitude, even the rain.

Possibly it’s everything I did in the lead up to leaving.  In my last six months in London, every weekend was a mini-adventure.  Walks through Brixton and Tooting, ukulele shopping in the East End, sushi on the 48^th floor of a building in the city. I was a tourist in my own town. But it was easy to do and I’d like to believe I’ll continue on upon my return to Blighty.

Don't get me wrong, London's just as broken as everywhere else—wankers on Boracles with severe, trendy haircuts and entitlement to match; handbag stealing petty criminals; spending too much money on things that are half the price in the rest of the country; maniacal bus drivers who head-to-toe soak walkers by barreling through puddles at 45mph.  There were some real low moments.  But I love it.  And it took going away to recognise.

If absence makes the heart grow fonder then okay London, I get it.  I love you.