Wanderlust

As of today, I am officially one month away from my next move. The plan is to move home at Christmas, then come back for a week and a half after Christmas to train the next nanny. That, however, may change, and I may end up training her before I leave for Christmas, which would result in me going to Korea in January rather than February - but that all remains to be seen.*

At any rate, my time in New Jersey is quickly coming to a close.

As I wait (somewhat impatiently) for my FSOT results, my thoughts remain in South Korea. For, as I've mentioned before, becoming a US diplomat is my dream, teaching English in Korea is my plan.

For me, one of the hardest things about moving to Spain was moving back. Culture shock wasn't too much of a problem. It was expected and planned for. Reverse culture shock, however, came from out of the blue and blindsided me.

I've been doing a lot of research (read:surfing the web) for my adventure in Korea, and as I was reading some forums (fori?) this evening, I came across a thread on reverse culture shock. As I read posts, a wave of memories washed over me. Memories of getting the urge to request movie tickets or order at a restaurant in Spanish, for example. More notably, Koreans and Spaniards appear to have something in common which is difficult for Americans to adapt to.**

Two words.

Personal space.

It's okay to run right into someone and not even acknowledge it.

I recall performing a sociological experiment in my neighborhood in Madrid. Bearing in mind that it has been more than two years since I moved back to the States from Madrid and my skills of estimation are rudimentary at best, I would estimate that Calle de las Delicias was at least 20 feet wide.**

A couple of times, I played chicken walking down that street.

I got tired of being the one to always move out of the way and wondered, if I didn't move, would the other person move to avoid running into me?

Yes, Madrid is crowded. But I lived out in the sticks (no, I'm lying. But it makes a clever pun off my metro stop).

However, even in a crowded city, there are bound to be times when you find yourself in an uncrowded situation. At certain times of the day, my neighborhood was definitively uncrowded. These were the times when I spontaneously chose to perform my sociological experiment (read:play chicken). When walking down a 20-ft-wide sidewalk, if there is only one person coming from the opposite direction, but they are directly in your path - will they move to avoid you? The answer is "No."

I'm not kidding. I ran into people this way. But only a couple of times, because I get annoyed running into people so I resumed dodging Spaniards.

This is not to say that I did not learn how to adapt to the culture. I felt a bit guilty one day when I pushed my way onto the bus (in typical Spanish fashion) and encouraged Kelly to push in with me, only for her backpack to get caught in the doors. I didn't feel guilty for too long, though, because the picture was pretty funny and that made up for it.

But back to my point (I really did have one): As I sit here and think about what was, for me, the most difficult aspect of my overseas experience, the only thing I feel is a desire to go abroad again, to have a new experience.

And I wonder, will I ever be content to remain in one place? Is Wanderlust terminal?


*That's basically all I know at this point; hopefully I will know more soon. I plan to go to Korea roughly one month after moving back to Washington.
**Arggh.. Grammar rules have changed and I know that it is now acceptable for me to leave a prepostion dangling, but it still hurts a little.
**That is, the sidewalk on the northern side of the street (if my sense of direction serves me correctly).

Just in time!

In my last post, I said that I was hoping to post more information about my trip in the coming week. So, for anyone who has been wondering why the post hasn't appeared yet, it may be useful to note that the phrase "the coming week" has been redefined by the Board of Definitions and Redefinitions of the English Language. It now means "the next 19 days." Therefore, this post is just in time - not late, as you might have imagined.

The trip was great; I had lots of fun hanging out with Homeskillet and Strong Sad (a.k.a. Victoria and Kelly) at their place on Holy Spirit Street. Jess and I also got to go visit Jonathan in Los Hueros (which is a.t.p.e.c. - I'm giving a whopping 50 points to whoever is the first one to figure out this acronym), and he hung out in Madrid with us as well. The trip mostly consisted of hanging out with friends and visiting the places we used to frequent, for example: Casa Mingo, el Rastro, Ricci's, etc. Jess and I both spent a substantial amount of money on clothing, I made Bailey's brownies a couple of times, and we (Victoria, Kelly, Amy, Jess, and I) watched the entire collection of "The Office" - which amounts to about 8 hours of fun... or should I say, the equivalent of the average day at the office? I also got to see Troy and Heather, Ana, Shawn, and Nicole Trabes. Plus, I got to know V & K's roommate Amy, and meet some of their other friends. It was an all-around good time. Also, Matt 3 came to town the day before I left, so we met for some wonderfully minging food at Casa Mingo. Here are some pics from the trip:

Jess, Jo, Vic, and I, at La Finca de Susana, which is a culinary school where you can get amazing food for a very reasonable price. Jonny and I on the Madrid Tour bus. Jonny "working hard" at the office.This sort of reminds me of Gareth's phone holster. "Did he make 5 calls, or six? You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk? Well? Do you?That Uncle William sure has one big Tub O' Mayonnaise.
This place has the best mojitos in the world.

This is the most amazing chocolate in the world. Seriously.
Jonathan? Playing video games? There's a shock...

Visitation or infestation?

Two days ago, I found what I thought was a large beetle in my bedroom. Now, insects are not generally something that I enjoy, but they don't cause me to run screaming from the room either. On this occasion, I decided to capture it and set it free on my balcony. But before you start to think that I 'm one of those really humane people that couldn't stand to hurt a fly, I'm not. I would kill a fly. I had two reasons for not stomping this particular bug. First of all, it was quite large- I don't mind squishing bugs, but I'm not particularly fond of hearing them crunch. Second of all, it was lying on its back unable to go anywhere, so the old glass & paper trick was a cinch (You know the one, you put a glass on top of the bug and then gradually slide the glass sideways until it and the bug are on top of a piece of paper, and presto - your bug is contained!

Once I had the little bugger trapped, I took pictures. I'm sure this does not come as a surprise to anyone, as that is typically my reaction in any situation. A few examples? I hit my head quite hard, it was bleeding and I had a mild concussion, so I felt that the logical course of action was- to take pictures. The bus doors closed on my friend Kelly's backpack and she couldn't get it free, so being the helpful friend that I am- I took pictures. At a fondue party, the fondue pot caught on fire- you guessed it- I took pictures. But I digress. Back to the story at hand.

Yet again, my fetish for taking pictures has come in handy. The next day, I showed my friend Kelly the picture of this "beetle" that I found. She told me it was a cockroach. I fainted. No not really, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt a little queasy. I realized that the chances of that being the only roach in the flat were slim to none. We don't have cockroaches where I grew up, which is why I was unable to identify it. Last summer, however, I had ants in my flat- little red ants. I had them for about a month and a half. When my landlords started receiving reports of ants on the premises, they decided to spray the perimeter- that only made things worse. Instead of being repelled from the building, they swarmed inside in an effort to get away from the sprayed area. Not fun. So then we were given ant traps. This helped a little, but they never totally went away.

At any rate, the concept of a roach infestation does not exactly warm my heart. My roommate, Elida, is convinced that it was one of our neighbor's roaches that sneaked in the front door. I hope she's right. This was the first time we'd seen a roach and it was full-grown. We're not taking any chances, though. We bought roach traps today and set them up in our flat. Hopefully we won't see any more of them.