Thirteen Schmerteen

It's February, but I was always a procrastinator, so here you have it. So, what will 2013 bring? I hope to manifest some more employment so I can travel more and save up for another big travel adventure in a year or two. I accomplished most of my resolutions from last year, I got a bike and used it, stopped working with kids, made traditions, cooked a lot, though I didn't do so well studying my German flashcards. Deutsch.

This year my goals are also relatively simple:

#1 Go check out the women's rock-climbing group

#2 Make more alone time for myself (the opposite problem from last year)

#3 Write in my journal at least once a month

#4 Visit a new country (Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria, Israel, Iceland? I'm looking at you…we'll see)

#5 Find a cafe I can work in that's not on the other side of the city (needs free W-Lan, soymilk, power outlets and at least one vegan snack)

#6 No really, study German more. Memrise at least once a week, sign up for a German class (Spring?) once I get my act together.

#7 Finally get a library card here!

#8 Stop going places and doing things I don't really feel like doing just because everyone else is doing them. I am a victim of peer pressure, it's true.

I need to also write in here more. When I lived in Prague, the words seemed to just flow out of me, but somehow I find that in Berlin my head is always just filled with noise. I disallowed Google from finding this blog again so I can pretend it's safe to whine about my more personal woes as I please, ja? Okay!

How is Berlin? It's complicated. I hopped an impulse flight to Brighton last weekend, however, and as soon as the plane took off I felt calmer than I have in a long time, so now I'm feeling the urge for another longer solo travel adventure. I woke up there and sat in my favorite old cafe, where I used to write all my psychology essays, and wrote in my journal for two hours, wandered around my old city, looked at the sea and had a really nice and calm day, some much needed alone time with no fear of being interrupted by any sort of unpleasantness. I love Berlin and logistically it makes sense for me to stay here, but I need to change some things and I'm working on figuring out exactly what they are.

With such a huge party culture, it's pretty easy to feel isolated when you find, one weekend, that you're not interested in getting totally wasted, again, to head to the weekend's coolest party. Sometimes, with exceptions of course, I worry that maybe I have a lot of drinking friends and not so many friends who know who I actually am, or care. Of course, on the other hand, it's also partially my responsibility to let people know who I actually am, but hanging out drunk in huge groups all the time doesn't always allow for so much personal connection.

Berliners are really busy people, there is an endless amount to do here, to discover, lots of people to meet, and that is both awesome and totally overwhelming. It's hard to commit yourself to staying in on a Saturday night when there is always some once a year event every weekend, that you really just don't want to miss. So you go, and you go the next weekend as well, and then you realize you've been on the go so much you really haven't had the time to think about anything that's happened for more than 5 minutes in a long time.

I'm out of survival mode for the first time in 6 years, and that means I've achieved something. It means I have a job, I have a visa, I have a flat, a group of friends and some sense of security for all the things I need to live. It also means that my mind isn't taken up by these urgent survival needs, no moving plans, no visa applications for awhile, no flat viewings, Fulbright essays, German classes, or new jobs to get used to, etc., for the first time in a really long time, so now I actually have to think about LIFE. Oh dear.

Let's not get too emo though, friends. I've reached a turning point. Things are a lot better, existential crisis-wise, than when I used to write in here when I was 22. Life doesn't feel quite so unknown and scary, I feel a bit more confident in my ability to make decisions and have collected a lot more life experience. I generally know who I am, now, I know roughly what I want (or at least what I don't want) and I'm learning to realize my mistakes...maybe not always before I make them, but at least more quickly into the impending mess.

A lot of the things I've been spending my time on are not so mentally stimulating anymore. When you get unhappy it's just a sign you need to change something, stop lying to yourself, stop saying "should" and get your shit together. I made a pledge to myself that I will learn how to stay in one place for awhile and make things work. IT WILL HAPPEN.

The world is ripe with possibility?

Na ja, at least there are these big ducks down the street from my apartment.

Au-Pair Drop-Out

(credit ukaaa)

Now that I am safely sitting far away in my sublet, I can write about this on the internet. Basically, my au-pair experience sucked. The 5-year old basically had free reign and was allowed to hit me, spit in my face, call me an asshole, hit me in the eye with a foam sword, etc. with very little consequence. I felt the family wanted another older, more responsible child instead of an adult employed by them. They didn't respect my time and though I asked several times and sat down with them to explain that I'd like some kind of schedule so I could make plans and have friends, they just assumed I would stop whatever I was doing for them and generally only told me my hours the day before or the morning of, which just made me really anxious.

Honestly, except for joking around with their oldest son and playing with the cute dog, I started to hate everything about my au-pair job. The first time I visually appeared upset in front of the family was after I cut up some fruit for their 5 year-old and his friend and brought it upstairs. I told them they needed to wash their hands first and they refused and spit in my face. Now I'm not talking cute stick-your-tongue-out whatever, they literally covered me with spit. I herded them to the bathroom, where they still refused to wash their hands and when I went to go help, I got the door slammed in my face. Meanwhile, the Mom was downstairs, doing god knows what, while I was getting completely disrespected by her child. Eventually I just told them, "Alright, if you treat me badly, you're not getting any fruit and I'm going downstairs now". I stormed downstairs, put the plate on the table in front of the Mom and asked, "I don't know what you want me to do! They spit in my face and refuse to listen." Her reply was just, "Do you like kids? They're just being 5 year-olds."

This was the general response. Now let me tell you, if I had ever spit in a babysitter's face when I was a kid, hit someone or was generally as bratty as her kid, my parents would've grounded me for a week, taking away any TV privileges, no friends over, no phone, etc. My parents rarely ever touched us, but when we were bad we generally had to write a LOT of apology letters to whoever we wronged and had a stern talking-to. I said to the Mom, "I know I need to learn how to better deal with him, but what are the consequences when he acts like that?" The answer was nothing. No consequences. Apparently this behavior was completely acceptable and didn't warrant any punishment.

Fuck. That.

I got yelled at for such things as putting the tea cup on the wrong side of the place mat and they made me mow the entire backyard lawn, which is definitely not an au-pair job. When they asked me at a later date if I would mow the front lawn, and I inferred that I would not care to, the mother made it seem like that was preposterous and asked me, "Well, what DO you want to do?!". The last straw occurred as I was attempting to get the lawn mower to work, crying hysterically in their front yard. I think my exact thought was something like "Fuck this shit, I'm leaving." I almost texted the host Mom "I quit" right then and there, but realized I probably needed somewhere to sleep first.

We had a date to talk last Sunday, where it was decided that it was not a good fit and I was leaving. They said I could have until mid-September, which they later revoked this past Wednesday when they told me I had to be out Friday (2 days later). Now, I am a relatively independent person, but there are plenty of 18 year-old au-pairs who don't know anyone in the country, don't speak any German and who have never lived abroad before. The fact that they would just shove someone off like that is absolutely ridiculous.

To add insult to injury, yesterday before I moved out I asked about getting paid. They said they would only pay me for 2 of the 3 weeks I worked, because the last week I was in-and-out looking for jobs and flats. When I explained,  "Well, what am I supposed to do? You told me to get out so I needed time to find somewhere to go!" Her response was that the chores and errands I did for them were payment for being able to sleep there. Honestly lady? You people are fucking rich. I'm pretty sure 70 euro extra for the week would not have broken the bank. My general thought is that them choosing an au-pair that didn't "fit" is mostly their responsibility. They brought a woman over an ocean from America. If they are so particular, they should have asked me more questions about myself, actually taken the time to Skype with me, etc. They fucked up and made a wrong decision and I was left in a shitty position in a foreign country, so I definitely should have been paid for the last week.

Anyway, I'm now happily sitting in a sublet in Kreuzberg, far away from them. After a few interviews, I have a job as a freelance English teacher and am making my first attempt at the visa on Monday morning, so wish me luck! I will be going to Rostock in East Germany for 6 weeks starting September 26th to teach an intensive English course and then coming back to Berlin November 10th, after which I'm staying forever! I'm sure I'll be back some weekends as well. Now I just need to find an awesome flat for November!

I wish I could just find a long-term flat now and stay here, so I could finish getting settled and make some friends, etc. but it will be an adventure, right? And earning a paycheck will definitely be nice.

So get ready for some hopefully less emo posts, now than I have escaped from indentured servitude and am no longer quite as prone to random fits of hysterics! Yes!

Updates!

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about this blog! My life has just been a little boring, and if I had posted, well, it would have been boring. Or whiny. Or whiny AND boring. Ouch.

BUT!

This will change soon.

Notable updates because no one seems to know where I am ever:

1. No Fulbright
2. Moving away from NoHo in less than two weeks...forever!
3. Only 3 more days of retail slavery.
4. On August 17th I'll be on a plane to Germany! One-way ticket! Sleepytime flight!

This is good for you, oh faithful readers, as it means I will no longer be bored and scanning things across a computerized platform whilst being yelled at for a multitude of things I have no control over and berated over a lack of local produce and lemon juice, but instead will be thrust into the hopefully welcoming arms of Berlin in search of:

a. job
b. flat that is awesome and full of clean
c. to be determined

So maybe then my life will be a little more exciting if not extremely overwhelming and ridiculous.

seeyouthenkthx

P.S. The URL to this blog changed, but you probably figured that out if you're reading this!

What the TEFL?!?!: Musings on Reverse Culture Shock

The other day I had a flashback of sitting in the classroom at TEFL Worldwide, face planted in my lesson plans, stressed and overwhelmed, waiting to use the two copy machines and for some advice from Terry. I was surrounded by all my TEFL peers, who came from so many places for different reasons, at different stages in their lives, with different histories and reasons for being in Prague enrolled in this course. There was something about that camaraderie that was unique. We all suffered through this challenging course, spent Friday nights getting wasted, Saturday nights doing homework, while simultaneously adjusting to a new country and language. We all freaked out before finally calling our one-to-one partner, took the exceedingly long tram journey back to Praha 9 at night, sat awkwardly in Galerie Fénix to get our daily fix of internet, ate potato balls at the beer garden behind TEFL/Hotel Pivovar, spent many nights on the hill that was Letna beer garden, overlooking Praha 1, and of course, were tricked by a pastry that seemed to be filled with chocolate, but was, obviously, actually filled with poppy seeds.

All I could think was, “Wow, I did that?” It’s crazy to think how different my life was during the one month of my TEFL course in Prague compared to now. There’s this weird thing that always happens to me when I’m back in America after an extended time living abroad. For some reason, whenever I’m back in the States, it’s hard to believe my life abroad was real. That everything really happened, and that that girl traveling Europe by train, working on farms abroad, teaching English to nerdy engineers at a Czech energy company, was me. I don’t know why this happens, and it certainly doesn’t work the other way around. When I’m living abroad, my American life and history definitely seems real…just further away and not as important. Perhaps it’s because when I’m abroad there’s usually at least a couple Americans around who can validate my past, even if it’s just a, “Yeah, I always love Taco Bell when I’m drunk too!” When I’m back in America, there are rarely many people who can validate my European existence. Maybe I’m just too busy doing exciting stuff when I’m abroad to think much of America. Or maybe I’ve just lived in America longer. Perhaps if I lived abroad for more than a year at a time, it would stop seeming so transient at some point. Who knows?

All I can say, is reverse culture shock is much more of a bitch than the good ol’ regular stuff. It has always been really hard for me to understand distance and endings. When I came back after a year of living in Brighton, England, I’d sit down and visualize the path the bus took from town to Uni, what all the bus stops looked like, remember what songs I was listening to as I passed them, and be so overwhelmed that I could know something so intricately and so detailed and not be THERE. How could I know exactly what the corner in the refrigerator that held my favorite wrap in the Sussex Uni shop looked like and not be able to GO there and get it?! It’s still a very hard concept for me to grasp.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my year, because there was absolutely no time for reflection during it. It was always one adventure right after another, lots of friends, lots of new friends, lots of alcohol, lots of emotions, and not much thinking. In some ways, it was very freeing to not have any responsibilities. My family didn't even know what country I was in for the majority of the year. Hell, even I didn't know where I would be a few days ahead, with the unique ability to hop on and off trains granted me by my rail card. I’ve always been something of an over-thinker and over-planner, so it was great to step so far outside my comfort zone and just go with the flow. I say that in a completely positive way. If I was asked what I would do differently, the only change I’d make is to remember to take a daily vitamin this time. Once my funds became limited, I basically lived off instant noodles and French fries. Paired with never getting enough sleep and my body was not happy. I am convinced my body is a reservoir for all of Europe’s Rhinovirus strands. Within me the future Super Cold is brewing, watch out. I’ve gotten sick more this year than any other year in my life.

When I left America last time, I was running away. I think almost every expat I met was. From a shitty relationship, from the unknown after graduation, from boring jobs and a predictable future. Though, I guess you don’t just up and move to a foreign country when everything in your own is perfectly to your liking. Of course all of us were leaving something unfavorable behind. Now that I’m back, I feel more like I am DECIDING to live abroad again. I am becoming bi-lingual, I am saving money, researching visas, e-mailing alums, and making connections. I’m not planning to move because I don’t want to live in America, I’m moving because I want to live in Europe (Germany).

I’m still working on the why. I like that I don’t need a car, that nobody uses dryers, that it’s not just the liberal hippie types that hate excess packaging and think it’s silly to waste things, that I can’t find all the shitty processed foods I eat over here and have to actually cook myself real meals. I like that the variety of Americans I meet, the ones that actually live abroad, are always DOers. They don’t just talk about shit, they make it happen, and tend to be more independent, confident and adventurous than the average people I meet at home. I like that the Europeans whose countries I’m sharing often have such different backgrounds from mine, if only because our countries had very different histories. It never ceased to amaze me how casually my students in the Czech Republic mentioned waiting in line for their food during communism, or what foods didn’t exist to them. Of course, it is something from their past that was routine and familiar, not much to think on for them. To an American who can really only imagine communism from the perspective of a history textbook, it is crazy to think how someone even a few years older than me could have such a completely different childhood. It’s weird to think of what it would be like if America was communist when I was growing up and I wasn’t allowed to leave to go on vacation to Canada, like my family often did. Or what it would be like to not have pineapples or bananas.

Things like this just make me realize how absolutely small my world is and how little I really know. It’s easy to feel smart when you’re surrounded by people who know the same things as you, who were required to take the same courses in high school, know the same collective national histories. There is definitely sometime about throwing myself into foreign situations and finding my way out that I’m addicted to. I want to learn and understand everything about the world…how could I just stay in one place?

I write this as another fall comes around, making me a bit nostalgic for all my TEFL and Prague friends, for cooking in my flat in Prague, then curling up on my couch and watching shitty American TV on the internet. For sitting in the beer gardens shivering, just to get as much time out of the not-quite cold yet weather, for dancing in Chateau Rogue while my friends have dance offs and kids on drugs break their glasses on the dance floor, for parties in the Bubenská flat, for the entire experience that was Cross Club, beers and movie nights at the Globe Café, for the high pitched sound the tram makes while accelerating, for the little lady at the Potravíny near my flat that always held up “Coriander!?” when I came in. Even more, for the walk home from Hlavní Nádraží, that always involved a stop in Mama Coffee, where my Czech ordering skills slowly improved, followed by a walk through the park and the vineyard to get to my flat.

While my life in Prague was not the perfect one for me, it was a good one. I’m happy at whatever Powers That Be for putting myself and such an amazing group of people together in one place for the time we had. The past year really did change my life. When I arrived in Prague that first day, I absolutely never imagined what lay ahead for me. While it will never be exactly the same, and that’s okay, I’m still very excited to go back for New Years to kick it with the kids holdin' down the fort, and even more excited at the prospect of living only one country away next year!

In the meantime, things here are not so bad. I’ve downsized to one job, which means I can actually have a life again, picked up a volunteer position teaching English for which I start training soon, and hopefully will soon acquire a free German tutor/conversation partner through Smith. I love my apartment, love my housemates, and while I still feel like I’m just waiting for time to pass until my next adventure, this break and peace from constant activity and new things was surely something I needed, if only to keep my body from acquiring yet more strands of the common cold. After this year I’ll be re-charged and ready for the next venture! In the meantime, y'all should come kick it with me in Northampton!

How I came from Prague to live in Northampton, MA.

If you read my blog, you know I've been back in America since May. What I don't think I've explained is why. I've been waiting until things were settled before telling. As both of my jobs and my class begin this week and I am sitting in my new apartment, I'd say we're good. So, here's a summarized version of the past year for all of you who are new here:

I graduated from Smith in 2009 and set off in late July of that year for a month long intensive Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course at TEFL Worldwide in Prague. The course kicked my ass and I (mostly) loved every minute of it, except being stressed all the time and writing papers on Saturday nights, but it really did prepare me for teaching English. After graduating, I was unemployed and almost homeless for a bit before finding an awesome flat and securing two jobs in Prague. My main job at Excellent Skola said they would sign my work visa papers, but not help with the visa process at all. Let me just mention, that any visa process is pretty complicated and terrifying, but of course this one was entirely in Czech.

After applying to 200+ jobs and attending some 15+ teaching interviews, this was as good as it was going to get so I took it. Lots of people want to teach English in Prague, so there is a lot of competition. They gave me the phone number of a lawyer I could pay to do my visa and he stopped returning my calls, so I found my own. My landlord Jiři liked to take frequent month long vacations to Miami, and as I needed a notarized and signed document and lease that guaranteed me a place to stay for a year, this significantly slowed the already time-limited process. At the end, the lawyer I hired to help was shitty and didn't get my paperwork done in time, nor did she bother telling me she was running behind after an entire month, so the day before my tourist visa was to expire, I found out I wasn't getting my work visa.

This was somewhat okay, because by November, I was stressed all the time. I liked my other job at TeaTime Skola, but my main job exploited me as much as they could. Though I signed a contract agreeing to this exploitation because I was desperate, it got to me over time. There are only so many times I can watch my boss take 30% out of my paycheck for taxes that weren't going to the government (I wasn't on the books) and healthcare I wasn't getting before wanting to cutabitch. Add all the shit they yelled at me for constantly that wasn't my fault, like asking my boss where my class was held because they didn't include it in their e-mail, and I was done with this company. When I had a crying mental breakdown because of a scheduling conflict, I realized I could do better. So, I put in my months notice and my last day was something around December 15th. While I loved Prague, there were some things missing in it for me. I was basically drunk the entire 6ish months I was there and while I do love getting completely schwasted and going to absolutely mind-shattering clubs (see: Cross Club) while dancing to experimental techno music and buying weed in stores behind the bar, I like having at least an OPTION of doing other things. I did not find this option. I'm sure my ideal community was there somewhere, but at that point in my life I wasn't willing to sit at a job I hated to find it.

Plus, my goal was to travel. I had so many friends living all over Europe and no time off to do so as my jobs were barely covering my rent. I figured if I left I wouldn't have to pay rent to begin with and so through some questionable means, I "extended" my tourist visa. I traveled to Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Ireland and England. I worked on farms in exchange for food and a place to sleep through HelpX, stayed with friends, and couchsurfed (via Couchsurfing.org. You can read about all of those adventures in this blog, but needless to say, even though I ran out of money at the end, got a horrible stomach virus while sleeping in a tipi with no indoor bathroom and came home bedridden with mono for a month, this past year was easily the best year of my life. I met so many amazing people with a similar sense of adventure. People who actually do things instead of talking about them. During my travels, I heard some amazing life stories and bumped into some people who had been traveling as long as 6 years! I made friends on planes, trains, bars, you name it. I felt as if I had really found my "people". It also made clear several things:

1) I want to live in Europe. I am still figuring out how to explain this decision well. There are many levels to this desire that I can explain if you ask, but what it comes down to is this: When I am in America, I find that I spend my time counting down to other days, hoping time flies quickly to the next vacation, adventure, etc. During the two years of my life I lived in Europe, I woke up every day excited about my life and felt generally more balanced between work/leisure.

2) To achieve #1 without being a slave to large language schools my entire life, I need to be at least bilingual. Thus, I have been learning German. While I am not yet fluent, I have been learning pretty rapidly. My education started in January while I was traveling and working on a farm in Germany, but I did not actually begin studying until March. Starting in March, I got hold of a German text/workbook and put time aside every day to do part of a chapter. I can now say, I am pretty much done with the book. Starting in June, I found a private German tutor whom I met with twice a week for most of the summer. She was a huge help and while our first lesson began with me not even understanding how to tell time, our last lesson was conducted almost entirely in German. Through Couchsurfing, I also found a German conversation partner, whom I met with a couple times and became friends with. I am also auditing intermediate German at Smith this year, but I'll get to that later.

This brings us to the now. I decided to apply for a Fulbright grant that will provide me with a job, visa, health insurance, and a travel stipend to teach English in a German school should I win. While I was originally planning to go back to Germany in August, I realized toughing it out in America for the year was worth it for this opportunity. Luckily, Smith College, my alma mater, agreed to let me apply through them even though I graduated, which increases my chances of succeeding and provides much-needed structure and support.

Once I decided to stay in America for the year, I made a choice to move back to Northampton, MA, where I attended university. It's a great little town where I still have some friends, rent is not too expensive, there are lots of lesbians, and endless amounts of coffee and vegan food. I can also audit classes at Smith for $50, so that helps my German cause. Not too shabby. After 2 trips to Northampton over the summer, I found a great apartment right near my favorite coffee place and one of my favorite bars for a very good price. I live walking distance to town, have a big kitchen, two porches, a closet in my bedroom and a backyard. Let me tell you, this was not easy to find. Of the 15 or so places I looked at, most of them were tiny and disgusting or with older women or men trying to replace their children. In one place I wasn't ever allowed to have people over for more than 15 or so minutes. In another, the roommates wanted absolute quiet at all times. Or there were the people that were too hippie for me, and I generally think of myself as a pretty progressive person, so that's saying something. It's all about balance.

Getting a job was much easier and I secured several interviews before I even moved up here. I now work at a small cafe in Haydenville and at Trader Joes. As I have a class 3 mornings a week, it made a 9-5 pretty impossible. I will probably have endless coffee in my life and a discount on awesome food so really things are pretty great. Now it's all about working the kinks out of my schedule as I am currently working 7+ days in a row without a day off starting tomorrow. After not having a full-time job for over a year, this is going to be interesting. Though, I think the variety will help.

My Fulbright application is due to Smith in late September. I've been working on it all summer and I have to say, I don't know how people do this while still in school. It has all been a LOT of work, but so far I've learned a lot about myself and what I want in the process. I've also learned how to write for a grant, which is an entirely different kind of writing from anything I've done previously. Before the end of this month, I have to complete my German language evaluation as part of the process. This is the part I've been shitting myself over. Almost all applicants have studied German in university for at least two years while I only began 6 months ago. I must say, I have a lot more motivation than I had while I was in school, if only because I don't HAVE to do it. And damn, have I studied hard. I know more German than I ever knew of French after 8 years of studying it. I am still terrified though because I'm not sure I've managed to cram 2 years of university-level German into my brain in 6 months. Wish me luck!

That's the general gist of it all. Basically, I am here this year to learn German, apply for the Fulbright grant and refill my bank account. My feelings about being back are mixed, but after my crazy year, it is nice knowing I'll be in the same place for 12 months. In August/September of 2011, I am packing my bags and heading back abroad whether I win the Fulbright or not. Until then, I'm looking forward to another New England fall.

I will definitely have more updates in here during the year, but I figured this post was very overdue.

Ertia.

The only thing you ever grasped from your music theory class 7 years ago is that you like minor chords. There’s something about that sound, leaving you wanting more, a bit off from the whole note it’s leading up to, that gets you. Today you heard a beautiful sound and wondered how it worked. Kind of like you realized how the velociraptors were singing that night at Cross Club. Sometimes things just make sense.

You’re not sure if it’s normal to sleep in 25 different places in 7 months, but you don’t really care. Mostly, you’re not sure how you’ll explain this year to anyone else. You won’t. What did you do? You lived, like everyone else, like everyone. But in 25 places. Twenty five spaces with hundreds of people, some whose names you’ll never remember but are etched into your memory regardless. Mostly you remember the lights and the feelings you had that just don’t muster up any words. So it’s just for you. You’re in a foreign country that is quickly becoming not-so-foreign, learning a language you only heard spoken aloud for the first time in January. It’s funny how life works, isn’t it?

You get down sometimes, but then you take the hour walk home from Rosenthaler Platz to Weberwiese because you don’t want to wait 8 minutes for the U-Bahn and regain the feeling that you're in control of your life. There's one thing you can always figure out and that is how to get home. Home being the surface that you'll be sleeping on that night. The world is your oyster. You don’t even know what that means and you don’t even fucking eat oysters, but it will be your oyster anyway, goddamnit. Life is hard. Growing up is hard, but you can’t help but think there’s something beautiful about it. It makes you sad when people talk about the “best years of their lives”. They say, “Those were,” past tense. You hope every year is the best year of your life, and if it isn’t then you’ll damn well make it be. After growing up around no one who ever really seemed happy, you’re determined. You don’t want to be one of all the Adults, almost every adult you met before you were 19, who got trapped in themselves. By themselves. By what everyone told them they were supposed to do. Inertia. The word inertia has been stuck in your head ever since you asked your friend two years ago, heartbroken, how she thinks people can ever stay in relationships forever, how is this possible? Forever is a long time and you weren't feeling very hopeful.

“Inertia.”

Well.

You’re definitely lacking that. If “ertia” was a word, it would describe you perfectly. We always asked each other in Prague, "This isn't our country, why are we here...what makes us want to just up and leave everything we know to go live in another country?" It was a running joke, something you asked every new expat you came across, "So...what are YOU running from?"

So what are we running from? That's a good question.

You think sometimes you’re either completely broken, or the only one whose got it right. Both, depending on the day. Lately you’ve been trying to figure out what your biggest fear is because you’ve wanted to ask other people the same question. Being an English teacher has sort of primed you to go right for the pressing personal matters. They lead to extended discussion, after all, and your TEFL school told you you talk too much. Skip the formalities and get to the good stuff. Who are you? Tell me.

It took a few weeks of thought, but it’s simple. You’re afraid that all the reasons you’ve built up for how things are, your understanding of the universe, is wrong. Subjectivity is no objectivity, but it’s all you’ve got. You’re starting to think that happiness is just a decision. You decide to be happy. Sometimes, the time is wrong, but in the end it’s just a new way of looking at the same things. You don’t believe in religion, but everything in your life has fixed itself to make sense eventually. It’s only those times when you were a stubborn sonofa that you missed it. Everything happens for a reason, maybe. Maybe you just give it a reason because that’s the only way you can live with it all, but it’s still eerie how things work sometimes.

Mythological Creatures in Germany

 

You’re sitting in a bed, in a house, in the middle of a farm in northern Germany. There are two spiders you’ve been watching for days in two separate crevices of your bedroom. You’re afraid to kill them because of the sound they’ll make when you squash them, an ongoing problem, but also because you’re living on a farm and you don’t think you’re supposed to do such things. What if they eat some pest, contribute to the greater good? The last thing you want is to murder the Greater Good.

You have dirt stuck under your fingernails and that makes you feel tough. Yet when you go to bed each night you shut the lights and rush under the covers lest some creature gets you. After telling your host this, she gives you a key to lock the door at night, which is when you realize it’s mostly mythological creatures you’re afraid of and keys won’t keep them out anyway. You’d prefer a unicorn over the bogeyman, but in reality it’s probably just the mice having tea parties in the walls again.

There is a lot of time to think and you’re not sure if you’re running away from something or towards it. Maybe you’re just running, so may as well enjoy the running for its own sake, and you are. Make a note to live in the moment. Page through a found self-help book and stumble upon the fourth Secret to Life: “Live in the moment.” Go figure. Think about how it’s even possible to live in the moment, anyway. Your to-do list rings in your mind and you think you will write it down soon, a list of things to do and pay for when you have access to fast internet again. You should probably book a flight back to America eventually. Ponder whether you really want to go back to America. Think about the unknown abyss of the future. Of all the things everyone else is doing and how you can’t make yourself want them. Of being a vagabond indefinitely. Wonder how long that last paycheck and what’s left of that money you’ve saved since you were 17 for just such an occasion will last. Probably not the rest of your life. Or through the summer. Same difference.

There’s always this problem: When you leave America, you think of all these things you might want to do when you get back, all these people you don’t want to loose in the woodwork and this sense that you need more closure than America has already given you, that bastard. Closure from what, you don’t know. Just closure. You always want things to be completely beat to death before you leave them. You’re not sure how this fares for a country. You think of your friend who asked why you’d ever even consider leaving the Greatest Country in the World for more than an extended holiday? How could you ever fathom never coming back for good? You don’t dislike America, per se, but you want to become an expatriate indefinitely just to oppose that thought whole-heartedly. You do miss pumpkin ale though, quite terribly.

You’re not looking forward to the second bought of reverse culture shock, even if it’s months away. You realized when you went to England that being able to understand all of the language spoken around you is stressful. You want to listen to everything at once, trying to understand all of the people chatting on the bus up Elm Grove, and eventually turn your headphones back on in defeat, exhausted. Make a note not to compare everything to Prague when you get back, but know it’s a losing battle. Hate how obnoxious you’re going to sound. You’ll miss the public transportation, sitting on trains and the trams, the Czech language. All the languages, really. You’ll miss feeling useful on this farm, more useful than you ever felt during your 4 months teaching English. You’ll miss the Friendly Sheep, her especially, looking at you with big eyes when you come to refill the water bucket at night. Her mother forgot her so she likes humans and you like her.

You’ll even miss not knowing what the fuck is going on around you half the time, what with your 30 word approach to each respective language. You think you’re just starting to get a hang of the metric system. You know that minus 8 degrees Celsius is cold and you don’t even need to convert it to Fahrenheit. You know what you weigh in kilos.

You think of a passage you read in Into the Wild yesterday, “I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” You hate yourself for being such a hipster sometimes, but think that if you call yourself a hipster it negates your hipsterness so you’re probably safe. Whew.

You’re not sure if leaving is easy, but that passage resonated with you somewhere. Goodbyes were always hard for you. Hard to understand. What is an ending and what should it mean? What does it mean to everyone else? You always put them off until last minute, clutching your drink, sipping slowly until it’s warm and flat in the corner of the pub, and then somehow you make your feet move to the train, bus, plane taking you away from those you care about while you sit teary-eyed and confused at the whole debacle, doubting. You could just stay here, you think. You could. But you don’t. You’ve made a habit of crying on public transportation in the last few years, but maybe you’re just on public transportation a lot.

Everything feels so profound when you’re leaving. Goodbyes are hard, but leaving is easy, you decide. Leaving places is easy for you, but if there’s one thing you’ll ever regret from your life up ‘til now it’s your inability to leave people when you should have. Like America, everything always needs to be beat to death until nothing interesting enough is left to ask any more questions. You think of how much time you wasted being unnecessarily unhappy since you were 15 and hope you at least learned a lesson this year besides how to conceal your inner-thoughts and desires from yourself. You wonder if you like to travel just because you’re afraid of getting trapped in relationships you don’t know how to get yourself out of. Then again, you also like staring out windows. When you discovered you could stick your head out the train windows in the Czech Republic there was no turning back. You were a dog in a car. Tongue out, smile wide. There’s something about being in trains and buses that makes you feel content. The motion. No matter what you do, you’re being productive. You have a destination and you’re working on getting there. You can sleep the time away, you can twiddle your thumbs. No matter, still going.

You’re inwardly proud of yourself for breaking up with Prague and believe it’s a first step in the right direction. She was a beautiful lover, with castles for eyes, cherubs carved into her skin and a clock delivering both death and the twelve apostles to you on the hour, but you never really paid attention. Cobblestones flowed in every direction, creating a path between you, but you two had some fundamental differences you just couldn’t shake and you were tired of fighting. She was fun, but you wanted to be understood more completely. It was precisely the hardest decision of your life.

Mostly you hope you can transfer your new decision-making methods to the next person you’re with that gives you that familiar wordless anxiety at your core. You know, the one that splits the pros and cons list right in two, ruining any attempt to have things laid out for you in a logical fashion, clear as day. Prague split you right down the center: Sixteen and sixteen. But somehow your fingers typed the letters and your voice led the conversations you needed to move on to the next phase of your life. Maybe you’re really growing up.

You’re not sure about this growing up thing. Not the growing in itself, for you don’t really mind getting older. You noticed your first wrinkle forming and viewed it as a rite of passage more than anything. Since you don’t remember Coming of Age like all the books say you should, this will have to do, won’t it? You’re worried about when the line is drawn between when you can have fun and when you can’t. Not the Sex, Drugs and Rock-n- Roll, like everyone else, though you could always use a bit of all of them, you guess. You don’t want to have to put away your sense of adventure and the absurd, much less pass up a good playground. You don’t ever want to be one of those people who talks about things they can no longer wear, play or do because they are “too old”. You think you won’t really mind the whole being wiser thing, however. You’re sick and tired of losing sleep over these things you’ve yet to experience.

But there you go thinking outside of the moment again. You’re not sure any fully functioning human brain is capable of this. You damn anyone that never dropped you on your head when you were a child, but maybe thinking ahead is not so bad. You always did like making lists…

Leaving, but not going home.

"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." -- Jack Kerouac

I don't even like Jack Kerouac, but I do feel that this quote sums up my life for the past several months in the true pseudo-intellectual, hipster-cum-stereotype fashion that only a good Kerouac quote can muster. Ah well, they say there's a place for everything. From Smith, back to Long Island, my road-trip, Bryn Mawr, to England, Prague and then off from there, there's been a lot of piling of suitcases. Not just piling, but pushing, dragging, your rare and oft unsuccessful attempt at lifting, crowded metro-riding, standing to watch as all my valuables hit the bottom of that staircase with a reverable 'phluummmph!'

Oops.

In short, sure or not, I'm at it again. A lot of life plan changes coming my way soon, so here's the actual explanation of what is going on for you, my loyal readers.

Short answer: I'm leaving Prague. The legitimate reason is that the person I hired to help me get my work visa dropped off the face of the Earth during that integral last week of my tourist visa, making it such that it's basically impossible for me to work legally here until I leave for an extended period of time. Goodbye job. While I'm pretty pissed at said visa person for not doing her job (word of advice: Don't hire Hana from So-Ry Agentura to help with your visa!), I had been in a sort of moratorium as to whether or not I was actually happy here anyway.

Which brings us to the less legitimate reason for my departure. Pretty much, I didn't meet an adult until I was 19 or so that actually seemed happy with their life, and fuck if I'm going to fall into some comfortable routine just because it's easier or expected of me. It was really hard for me to make this decision. I love Prague. Walking around this city at night, I feel a real pride in myself for getting here. I look around at the buildings, the castles, think of all the crazy, amazing and determined people I've met since August and it's almost crippling to think of leaving. The main factor is that I don't feel like I'm either a good teacher or that I'm making any positive difference in the world. I wake up in the morning wishing I'd get sick so I didn't have to go to work, my boss constantly reprimands me and makes me feel like I'm a failure at life. After a bit of this, I start to wonder if I really am. I sit on my couch all day, unable to concentrate on lesson planning and unable to make any plans because I'm always so anxious about lesson planning. When I had a complete mental breakdown due to a simple scheduling conflict, I knew that this was no longer healthy for me. That's not to say it was all bad, I learned so much from both TEFL and my jobs and have a few pretty awesome students. Perhaps at a different job, with more structure and support, I could be happy doing the teaching thing, but not here as it is now.

I made this decision a couple weeks ago, but I didn't want to make a post until I knew exactly what my visa situation was, sorted things out with my flatmate and officially told my jobs I was leaving. This is a public forum, after all, and it wouldn't look too great if they found this first somehow.

The question is...what's next?

I'm not going home, that's for sure. My first thought is that I needed to visit all of my friends who're living abroad, since I haven't had time to with my job and since I won't always have the privilege of 10+ friends living all over Europe. However, without a paycheck, funds for basically hanging out long-term run a little low, not to mention my feelings of self-worth, so I decided to look into Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) as an option. This research led me to http://www.helpx.net, which is basically a database of farms, hostels, hotels, families, B&Bs and even boats that need help with something or another and will give you a place to sleep and cook you meals in exchange for roughly 5 hours of work a day. I'm not really a fan of your general museum, shopping, fancy-schmancy tourist stuff, so this sounded great to me. I'll pick up some skills while actually meeting people and learning from them. It is definitely one of my goals to have my own garden and be as self-sufficient as I can once I have my own property, so why the fuck not? Give me something to build or plant, some dirt to roll around in or some poop to clean and I am set. After how much I've had to use my brain in the past several years, it'd be nice to actually use my hands for a change.

As I begin planning all this, I feel like I'm living some surreal life out of a book. Locations I'm considering are Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Spain, Portugal and various places within the UK. If you told me I'd be traveling alone through Europe to places like Bulgaria, Portugal and Slovenia to work on farms, I would've said you were crazy, yet here I am. I definitely want to visit friends in Germany, Austria and Spain so those are definites and I've already had contact with farms in both Germany and France. Hopefully everything else will come together soon and I can work everything around my less than favorable visa situation.

I feel good about this, though thinking about leaving the little life I've made for myself here makes me sad. Lately I just stare at everything around me just in case it's the last time I notice the way that tree fits perfectly into that building's silhouette or how that graffiti contrasts just right with the color of the sky. It seems like it's time though, in that way that it does. Most of the people I started out with here have already gone. The general empty, crazy state I've felt looming in my subconscious is my cue. I leave December 15th to spend Christmas as an adopted child in Lewes, England. Then it's hopefully back here for New Years and onwards from there.

I still have no idea what I want to do with my life, but at least I'm accumulating things that I don't, feelings that I don't want to feel. This is the only way I know how. What else can I do? It may seem crazy, irresponsible, whatever name you want to call it, but I like to think I'm traveling around, picking up the bits and pieces that will one day come together to form this blurry little life of mine. It will be okay, right?

Time to get my hands dirty, or, to continually quote the fuck out of Ani Difranco...

I got friends all over this country
I got friends in other countries too
I got friends I haven't met yet
I got friends I never knew
I got lovers whose eyes
I've only seen at a glance
I got strangers for great grandchildren
I got strangers for ancestors

I was a long time coming
I'll be a long time gone
You've got your whole life to do something
And that's not very long

"I move in water, shore to shore"

Anyone who reads this or has talked to me knows that my time here thus far has been very up and down. I think it's like that for all of us. Socially, aesthetically, it's pretty good. I meet new friends every week. Moving to another country is hard, though. Moving to a country where most of the employers don't give a crap because there's so many people to replace you is harder. Being a non-EU citizen and having to deal with the heart-attack that is a work visa, harder still. I've come to the conclusion that nobody can agree on one set of rules because there isn't one. Like living in the Smith dorms, if I can survive this (or the crazies, in Smith's case), I can probably survive anything.

Sometimes I have a great week, then a terrible one. Three bad days, then an amazing one. One good hour, one bad. We'll be on the minute scale soon, I'm sure. I don't know what I want or what I should do, what I'm doing because I feel guilty and obligated and what I want to do. Most of the time this is okay, I really need to work on not taking life so seriously, but sometimes it gets to me.

This week has been hard. Job hard, communication hard, life hard. Germs hard. One of my good friends is moving away on Tuesday and that's also unfavorable. After suffering through the TEFL course together, it's like losing a comrade of sorts (and a vegan one, at that!). The downside of the whole expat thing is everyone's always in motion. Don't get too attached, they're just going to leave, you know. It's like college, but in months instead of years. I've already seen many people head off to bigger and better things and I've only been here about 3 months. And hell, I'm going to leave too. Sometime. When this is and where I'm going also changes every five minutes. I have a lot of plans and dates in my head, but I needn't speak of them until they stay there for more than a few days. We'll see. An inkling in my brain of doing the WWOOFing thing when the dead of winter is over, then making it back before graduation if the teaching thing doesn't stop stressing me out so much. I would very much like to see everyone left at Smith in one place before they all head off everywhere.

I've been reading "Animal. Vegetable. Miracle." and it's making me want to live somewhere for awhile so I can grow nut trees and asparagus. I think I could be almost content in life with just a garden, a food processor and a puppy. And maybe the internet. The addiction runs strong.

The point of this entry is that even though I've been having a stream of days that lead me to ask the ever-present questions, "Why am I here? What am I doing with my life? What will I do next? When will 'next' even be?!", today I decided to walk back from I.P. Pavlova instead of taking the tram 4 stops. As I was walking up to the park I normally cut through, I saw this tiny scraggly dog, maybe a small Yorkie, hopping around at the entrance. His owner, a man maybe in his late 30s, bent down to play with it, picked it up to his face level and presumably said lots of really cutesy things to it in Czech. He then put the dog down, who was content sniffing a bush, and started walking ahead. Upon whistling the dog immediately ran to his side, then ahead, and kept peeing on the fence every 10 or so feet while making eye contact with him in a "Daddy, look what I can do! This fence is mine now!" gesture. Eventually the dog ran up to a dirt pile near me and rubbed its butt across it. It made my day much better. It also made me decide that if I'm going to be straight I can only date boys who play with dogs.

How simple life would be if my only goals were a) sniff things and b) pee everywhere.

I am gonna make it, through this year, if it kills me.

I feel like a crazy person, mostly. It's been a rough couple weeks here for me. I've been generally silent, until lots of wine last night, when some part of me decided I should actually try to process all these thoughts, somewhat logically, instead of continually ignoring them. Every other minute I'm doubting every decision I've ever made in my life, especially the ones that led me to be here. The fact that getting a job was such a mission, and now that getting enough hours to pay rent is another curveball that's been thrown at me, is a bit overwhelming. The amount of money I'll have to pay for my visa and all of the work that goes along with that doesn't help.

These ominous tasks (and pricetags) looming find me looking up jobs on the Portland craigslist more often than not. Browsing E-Access for real jobs wherever. Thinking of other cities in which I'd be happy to grow roots for awhile in America, or maybe not America. Fuck if I know. My point is, I'm having a lot of trouble deciding whether I've made the right decision, whether I'm continuing to make the right one, spending all this money, money I've saved up since I was 17 years old, and not getting much back just yet.

Does the right decision even matter? I'm living in Europe, I'm out of my parents' house, doing cool things. I have a great opportunity, one my parents and most of my friends haven't. Everyone tells me I'm so brave, but I think I'm just really good at leaving. Having to settle somewhere and make things work for more than a year is 100% more terrifying. Once I have a schedule and am more stable in the visa and job department I can start my travels, visit all my friends in Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, England, Ireland...

Sometimes I'm sure I hate everything about teaching, that I'm utter crap at it and am wasting everyone's time. It's definitely not my calling, sure. I probably won't continue teaching in this capacity when I get back to the States, but it's hard to tell where it all stands after that. Some days are not so bad and yes, it is a new skill I'm learning and will take some getting used to and of course some practice. The 5000 job rejections didn't quite help my self-esteem, either. I don't think I'm THAT bad of a teacher. I graduated with a Strong Pass, so there had to have been something promising in my brain.

I wrote this in my other journal, but jobs that don't have an end time at the conclusion of the day completely stress me out. I hate that I can always do more, I can always do better. Sometimes I just want the locked door of my workplace to tell me it's out of my hands. You don't get that with lesson planning, and so I am continually very anxious. I always think I'm slacking, whether I am or not doesn't really matter.

I just wish I knew when I was being homesick and when I was being reasonable. Or should I say America-sick? I don't want to go home. It was easier last time I lived abroad. I could channel all of my angst into the fact that I was in a Long Distance Relationship and that it sucked. The fact that we fought every five minutes, that I always felt stressed and guilty, also made it quite easy to displace all my homesickness into general angst, worry and anger. Sure moving to Brighton was hard for awhile, yeah I had the whole relationship thing. I spent many nights crying on the phone, yes. It took awhile to make a group of friends I really identified with or to get to know the ones I did, took awhile to not feel like the token Queer Older American in the mass of first years, to stop caring, to realize which friends weren't the right ones. No language barrier though, however hilarious British-English might be for me at times ("Did you say fairy cakes?!"). Culture not that different. Not as hard.

Now that it's fall, I've been missing a lot of things. I miss "Crazy Wednesday" $1 lattes at the Elbow Room. Parties in the Friedmans. I miss being able to find kale everywhere, the food co-op, the forest and mountains in Massachusetts, bonfires on the beach on Long Island. Triple ristretto espresso at Northampton and Amherst Coffee. The crisp scent of autumn in Massachusetts and being surrounded with intelligent, assertive, often half-naked women at Smith College. The rock-climbing wall, canoeing for free in Paradise pond. All things that are free, actually.

I don't miss the work and honestly, Northampton is one of the last places I'd want to be this year (after Long Island and other cities that are mostly conservative and plagued by large amounts of traffic jams). Sure, I'd love to visit my friends that still go to Smith, but living there would not be good for me this year and I know that.

Sometimes I also miss the progressive nature of Northampton. I miss seeing girls holding hands, feminist boys, locally grown food, bike kitchens, catching masses of people hula-hooping in the park as I'm walking back home. Prague is great, yes, and I'm sure the language barrier keeps me from understanding a lot of what's going on around me, really taking it in and understanding what the city feels like to someone who isn't a little English-speaking expat girl from America, but it's depressing sometimes to see just little inklings of progressive ideas here and there when I'm used to having it in my face everywhere I go like it was in the Pioneer Valley. True to its name, "Northampton: Where the Coffee is Strong and So Are the Women." Sure, there are a lot of ignorant rich hipster kids, a lot of sheltered girls only at Smith because they hate or are afraid of men, but it was nice always being inspired like that. Prague has a lot of potential, I've got to throw it a bone, saying that communism just ended in 1989. Welcome to the Real World, Nicole.

I think I'm just having a quarter-life crisis. Adjusting here is hard, especially with all the bureaucracy bullshit, but realizing that I actually have to figure out what I want to do with my life, that there is no more structure lining my future, is harder. This was it, the last plan. I just wish I felt more confident about the teaching thing. Having to fight so hard and spend so much money for it when I'm not even sure I'm good at it or want it is rough.

If my visa situation doesn't work out, I think my plan is to travel west through Europe and visit all my friends, fly back to NY, see East Coast friends, then drive out to the West Coast (probably Portland) and get a job, make friends, live life. I'd feel pretty upset and defeated if I spent all the money and effort here just to have my visa get rejected, but it's good to have a backup plan.

I have my entire life to live in America. I just can't decide between what I want and what I think I should do. It's a fine line, you see.