Fish out of water
I found this blurb in my Facebook notes, dated 3 May 2012, which was very soon after we arrived back in the US from Israel. A fun walk down memory lane for me. Not sure that I've progressed all that much with my repatriation -- I avoid Starbucks like the plague -- but I do own a vehicle now, and I have actually learned how to drive! But just because I speak English like an American, that doesn't mean I necessarily feel like I really belong here yet. Enjoy...
Talk about feeling like an idiot! Or at least awkward and out of place. It's not like we haven't visited the US before, but this time is different, because we aren't just here as tourists, visiting, staying with friends and family. We're starting to LIVE here.
So, on the first day back after living abroad for 19 years and traveling for 48 hours, we began to feel the difference. At a couple meetings, Nate had to make extra effort not to insert foreign words like "balagan" into his speech. Are you OK? they asked at the bank, sensing his obvious conscious effort to make sense to the average American.
Meanwhile, I had some shopping to do at Safeway. After a painfully long decision-making process on diapers, while picking out some jars of baby food, I accidently knocked one to the floor, where it shatter-splatted. Horrified, I had no idea what to do - report or ignore it? Happily, some other mothers in the aisle said they would go get help. Whew.
After paying, I had been thinking to collect my bags and leave when the cashier brought them around for me and plopped them in the shopping cart I had planned to abandon. It was then I realized that everyone here arrives in a vehicle. No one even lives near enough to walk. I had also arrived in a truck, a borrowed one, but then had to wait for Nate to return. During the long wait, I grew more and more aware of the fact that we were people without a vehicle of our own in a land of vehicles. Not to mention that I don't even know how to drive. I actually felt a bit embarrassed.
Finally tired of waiting around outside and watching shiny rigs drive by, I went back inside to get a drink at Starbucks. Not a coffee drinker anyway, I got flustered trying to remember their special sizing terminology. "I'll take a big, no a tall, no a..." Looking at the board didn't help, because the prices were too small, and I couldn't decide whether to read the sizes right-to-left or left-to-right. Then on to the choice of tea. I had to have the surprised girl bring the selection over for a close-up view, instead of just knowing off the top of my head, out of the apparently vast experience typical to every customer, which tea I wanted. Sigh. This being American thing is going to take a lot of getting used to!
Talk about feeling like an idiot! Or at least awkward and out of place. It's not like we haven't visited the US before, but this time is different, because we aren't just here as tourists, visiting, staying with friends and family. We're starting to LIVE here.
So, on the first day back after living abroad for 19 years and traveling for 48 hours, we began to feel the difference. At a couple meetings, Nate had to make extra effort not to insert foreign words like "balagan" into his speech. Are you OK? they asked at the bank, sensing his obvious conscious effort to make sense to the average American.
Meanwhile, I had some shopping to do at Safeway. After a painfully long decision-making process on diapers, while picking out some jars of baby food, I accidently knocked one to the floor, where it shatter-splatted. Horrified, I had no idea what to do - report or ignore it? Happily, some other mothers in the aisle said they would go get help. Whew.
After paying, I had been thinking to collect my bags and leave when the cashier brought them around for me and plopped them in the shopping cart I had planned to abandon. It was then I realized that everyone here arrives in a vehicle. No one even lives near enough to walk. I had also arrived in a truck, a borrowed one, but then had to wait for Nate to return. During the long wait, I grew more and more aware of the fact that we were people without a vehicle of our own in a land of vehicles. Not to mention that I don't even know how to drive. I actually felt a bit embarrassed.
Finally tired of waiting around outside and watching shiny rigs drive by, I went back inside to get a drink at Starbucks. Not a coffee drinker anyway, I got flustered trying to remember their special sizing terminology. "I'll take a big, no a tall, no a..." Looking at the board didn't help, because the prices were too small, and I couldn't decide whether to read the sizes right-to-left or left-to-right. Then on to the choice of tea. I had to have the surprised girl bring the selection over for a close-up view, instead of just knowing off the top of my head, out of the apparently vast experience typical to every customer, which tea I wanted. Sigh. This being American thing is going to take a lot of getting used to!
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