That Catching-Up Blog Entry You've All (Long Since Given Up) Waiting For

Today I landed in Almaty on an international flight.

And I was reminded of that moment eighteen months ago, the last time I landed in Almaty on an international flight. I was exhausted, in the middle of a massive life transition. Starting a new book in my life. Facing the strange familiarity, like the kind you get when reminded of a memory you didn't realize you had, and still aren't sure you're remembering right, because some things seem different. Simultaneously overwhelmed and excited for the new experiences that lay before me. And struggling to adjust. Perhaps a little depressed. Perhaps a little ecstatic. Perhaps a little of everything. You remember. It's basically all I've really told you about, in this well-intentioned effort of a blog, before that lovely intention fizzled.

But today was different. Today I was flying back from Thailand after a four-day visit, a visit ordered by my doctor here to go see a doctor there to figure out what's been going on with me, because the doctor here couldn't figure it out and he wanted me to get the best testing available, which happens to be over there. (Yes, they diagnosed the problem, no it's not serious, yes it's easily manageable--- more on that later.) I digress.

Today was different. As the opaque wisps of clouds disappeared above the plane and the ground got closer and closer, it wasn't strange or scary or exciting or unknown. It was good. It was familiar. It was happy. It was like coming home.

I was excited, sure. But it wasn't the cool, shaky, brave exciting you get when you're facing the unknown. It was the warm, comfortable, steady exciting you get when you come back. After four days of feeling suspended in limbo as the simultaneously privileged and helpless foreigner. Receiving deference at every turn and being catered to, experiencing the comfortably warm climate and lush scenery, and the nicest hotel you've ever been in, and having an entire hotel room to yourself, and room service for the first time in your life ever-- but also being stuck in a strange place with unfamiliar sounds and speech, unfamiliar symbols on signs (even in the accents of the people speaking English, the accent is so strange and different you can barely understand). A place where the currency is weird and you're constantly doing the exchange rate math to figure out how much you're spending. A place where the climate is one your body is unaccustomed to. A place where you're not sure how to dress so you don't stick out or which side of the road to walk on or where to find good food or what the protocol is for saying hello or goodbye or thanks-- or even how to say hello or goodbye or thanks, even though you've looked it up at least twenty five times on Google translate. When you've been feeling suspended in a surreal dimension of your experience (partly while dazed and drugged from hospital things, and vegged out because you avoided Haze Unfamiliar by hiding out in your hotel most of the time, which was merely a milder and less unsettling, Haze Unfamiliar's little sister), and you come back to a place you know. Like waking up to life again after a weird dream. That kind of exciting.

I normally get annoyed when the passport control officers pepper me with curious questions about what I as an American could possibly find interesting about Kazakhstan, or what my family could possibly like about living here. I normally am just thinking, behind the polite nod and simple response Just stamp my freaking passport, I want to get back to my place already. But today, as I briskly walked off the plane with my suitcase clipping behind me, I was so happy to walk into a familiar arrival gate, to actually be able to read the signs, to be in a place where I could speak and understand the language around me, I really didn't mind the friendly interrogation. It made me feel welcome. I didn't need a taxi home, I could take the bus. Because I knew where to go. I knew the streets and parks and restaurants we passed, I knew which bus stop I needed to get off at. I was able to ask my fellow passengers, with effortless language skills, for help lifting my suitcase off the crowded bus as my stop approached. I knew the shortcut from my bus stop to my favorite cafe on the corner by my house, I knew every shop and sign and hole in the sidewalk the entire way. And I knew exactly what I wanted to order on the menu. I knew the cafe manager, and gladly chatted with her about my trip in response to her inquiries about my suitcase that still had the "Air Astana" sticker on the handle. And after dinner when I approached my stoop with my suitcase chugging cheerfully behind me, the key I used on the door was my key, and it was my door.

It was home.

Sure, the bathroom sink is still clogged like it was before I left, and I still need to call the plumber. I still have laundry to fold, and I still have work to get back to this week, lessons to plan, a Christmas program to plan (yes, they put me, the poor overwhelmed new teacher, in charge of the preschool Winter program this year--- that's for another blog. I digress again.). Sure, I have my sweet, mucousy, adorable, impossible little three-year-olds to look after and teach when I go back to preschool later this week. I still have to vacuum my room, which I neglected last week because I was running late for my flight and ran out of time. And sure, there are a few inconveniences I deal with as an expat local that the local locals don't.

But now, instead of things I have to do, those are things I get to do. Because this is home now.

Sometime in the last eighteen months... don't ask me to pinpoint when, but sometime... Almaty quit being that big move I made, and started being home. I think it has been for some months now, but it wasn't until today that I realized it so deeply.

And that's what matters.

Puh

There are millions of them. Little white fluffs with tiny specks of black at their centers. They're in the air, everywhere you go.  Light, floating, barely even there. You want to be annoyed, but they are just so soft and pretty that you can't be. Instead you want to dance and twirl through them as they brush your face and arms and filter the sunlight into fuzzy little blobs and texturize the breeze like feathery warm snowflakes, but you contain the urge because you are a grown-up and don't want the other grown-ups passing you on the street to think you are crazy.

After six years of dense powdery itchy and invasive South Carolina pollen, they are a welcome change. Unlike pollen, they are light, and big, and cling together in clusters, and float away from your every motion, and only make you sneeze about once or twice per hour, instead of sixty times per minute. And if you keep your windows shut, they don't creep in where they are not wanted. I think they are cottonwood seeds of some Eastern species, but I'm not sure. Google in English is surprisingly sparse when it comes to information on the flora of Central Asia. They are colloquially sometimes referred to as пух (pronounced "poohh"), the Russian word for feather down or fluff. And so, since there really couldn't be a more perfect-sounding word for them, that is what they are. Puh.

The most notable thing about this week has been the weather. It has caught my attention multiple times per day, every day.

One noteworthy thing about it has been the drastic change. A week ago, it rained a lot. A week ago, it was still dropping to almost freezing temperatures at night. A week ago, the city was gray. Now it's like the opposite. In like four days, the city turned from grey to brown to green. A few days ago I was hanging my laundry to dry on my enclosed balcony and noticed that the tree outside the balcony window had suddenly, practically overnight, blossomed into a white and yellow craze, made all the more radiant by the backdrop of a blue sky and sunshine; but by the time I took down my dried laundry two days later, the petals from my postcard-worthy tree were already falling to the ground and leaving robust, pale-green leaflets behind them. I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of my tree to commemorate the spring of 2016, but I haven't lost hope completely. Almaty is full of trees. The city is actually famous for it. Surely there is one out there that still has its flowers.

The other noteworthy thing is how unbelievably comfortable it is. I don't know what it is about the climate here, but it's just so... agreeable. It's still chilly at night, but somehow even in the day during sunny, breezy 80-degree afternoons, wearing a light jacket or sweater is fine, especially if you leave it unzipped. Then at night, you can just zip it shut and pull on a scarf for the 48-degree evening walk home. I think it's the lack of humidity that makes the temperature variations so manageable. At any rate, I'm not discussing the weather just because life as a teacher was uneventful this week. The spring weather has actually been noteworthy on its own merit. At least to me it has.

Teaching has been easier, though. I'm not sure what happened last week, but it suddenly didn't seem like such a big deal anymore to be "prepared," in whatever vague unachievable sense I had previously reached for. The new defining goal of each lesson is to meet my students with the same amount of energy that they have, and to feed their curiosity. So come early to enjoy the peace and quiet, spend ten minutes brainstorming whiteboard explanations and games on the topic at hand, and five minutes printing worksheets and queuing a Youtube video, and we're ready for class. The downside of this basically-wing-it phase is that it's a mild rebellion against preparedness, a reaction to my caring too much and stressing out in previous weeks, which will hopefully balance itself out into a healthy medium somewhere down the road. The upside is that I'm finding it much easier to prioritize, and let the little things go, and be flexible-- I'm learning how to teach kids. I mean, this isn't Oxford English, this is an after-school program. So what my first class didn't get to the vocabulary section of the lesson today: we'll get to it next class. They needed that extra speaking activity to get the quiet ones talking as confidently as the rest. So what my second class didn't get to anything I had planned for this week: five minutes into the lesson, their blank expressions told me that we weren't ready to learn new stuff, we needed a reinforcement of the last 4 lessons instead because half of them were sick last week and missed it. It's fine. I can save today's plan for next week, and just review vocabulary today. My last five weeks of intensive lesson plans, half of which were so ambitious that I didn't have enough class time to use all of them, has given me a whole mental toolbox of teaching ideas I can improvise at a moment's notice, I can just pull from that. And they're kids. They need to play in English, not just write and speak it. So skip that third grammar exercise, and play Simon Says instead. Oddly, with this seemingly haphazard approach, I end up still hitting 19 out of the 20 essential lesson elements on my boss's list, without the headache of painstakingly planning it. They're learning. Steadily. There is a significant, measurable improvement between the beginning and the end of each class period. That's what matters. As long as I meet that goal, I can always be a perfectionist about it later, when I have the energy again. Which will probably be Wednesday.

This is me ten minutes into my first skating lesson--- momentarily forgetting to concentrate, but still gliding in rhythm and balance without thinking about it. Only in this case, my left skate is games and my right is whiteboard illustrations, my rink is a circle of eager little minds, and my loudspeaker music is the squeals and laughter of little kids. And on my way walking to and from the "rink," I'm surrounded by pixie wings.

Puh!

Plot Twist

When something goes wrong in your life, yell "Plot Twist!" and move on.
-- An insightful post in my Facebook newsfeed

Whatever is good, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praise-worthy-- let your mind dwell on these things.
--an Apostle

Do not let what you don't have keep you from using what you do have.
-- a wise fortune cookie


I've been quiet. But it's been almost a week, and I owe this blog a post.

It's been a difficult week. This week marks the end of the first month of my time in a new city and a new life. It's not what I expected it to be. But that's not a bad thing. Some difficult things have happened, things that I didn't see coming when I sat in my beloved little room with the purple walls and the Ikea bookshelf and made the decision to finally follow my dream to be an English teacher. But all that means is that, sitting here at 6am in my tiny one-room with the pink-tinted sky brightening my window, regrouping from the hard knocks with the comfort of hot tea, friends' support, and the internet's wonderful supply of escape puzzles, there are other things that I can't see coming in my current state of exhaustion. Good things. Happy things. Things to validate the hope that stubbornly refuses to be uprooted from my heart. Things to signal that God is there. Right there. Making it all into something good.

So... this week. Well, my soul was lashed to smithereens by human harshness in a sector from which I didn't expect it, and I had to back away from someone I care about. My appetite lapsed, and my sleep cycle went more haywire than it already was (which I didn't think was possible). I was late to work for the first time (my pristine recooooooorrddd!). I lost lesson plans that I had spent hours on (stupid computerrrr!) and had to cancel on my boss who wanted to see the plans that day. I'm struggling to incorporate all of the aspects into my lesson plans that she wants me to (the list keeps getting longer) and I hope she doesn't think I'm just not listening to her. My more difficult students are showing their truer colors now that I'm no longer "new." (Why don't they want to learn?) Yesterday, I was physically ill from the stress. I'm finding myself too inexperienced to plan lessons well and too kind-hearted to enforce classroom management. And my heart is just tired. And probably bleeding a little. And tired.

But discouragement is just evidence of courage-- a courage that has been dissed and needs only to drop the dis.

When something unexpected in life lays you out on the floor and knocks the wind out of your lungs, that's bad. Yes, it hurts. Like if you've got a concussion, then yes you need more than a bandaid. Yes, you may need a time-out, a whistle-blow that rescues you from the pressure of the match. You may need stitches. That's just the world we live in. But even if it's so bad that you're temporarily incapacitated, hope is still there. Your dreams are still there. God is still there. Grace is still there. Flowers on the windowsill, sunlight on your face, human connection. Life is still there. All of them are still there. Just like they have been all along. Just cheering for you to regroup, to heal, to get back up and try again. Of course those swings are going to still be out there too, coming right at you. But this time you'll be stronger, you'll know how to see it coming. You'll know how to dodge. You'll maybe even know how to leg-swipe it right back.

The difficult thing about rough patches is that they are difficult. The good thing is that it can only get better from here.

Today, I'm off. Today, I'm eating three meals. Today, I'm revising my lesson template again, and researching student motivation. Tonight, I'm going skating, and having tea with a friend. Today, I'm taking time. Because guess what happens when you take time. Wounds heal, skills grow, life changes, and things work out for good. If you plant acorns, you get oaks. No matter how long the winter is.

That's the world we live in.

Thanks to the friends who have been praying for me. You're the awesomest bestest. :)

Skates

Two weekends after my move, I went skating. I didn't know how to skate, but that's no reason not to do it. It was after my first half-week of teaching, and it was the best way to end my day off. We had only paid for a 30 minute admission to the rink. As it turned out, 30 minutes was perfect for a first lesson.

It was wobbly at first. The physics of skating are different from the physics of walking, and my center of balance was confusing my body. Thankfully, I was with a new friend and colleague, and her kid. She helped me start small and focused. "Just angle your feet 90 degrees from each other, and push" she demonstrated.

So I focused my mind, wobbled a little to find my balance, angled my feet, and pushed right. Woaaaah! Okay you just moved a little and you didn't fall. Good. Now, try again. Check it out, you moved again-- perfect. Okay, now try it to the left. Whoops! Hey, you lost your balance, but you're fine. Now, angle, and push. It's okay that you aren't moving fast. Just focus. Focus, angle, push. Focus, angle, push.

I felt like a baby trying to walk. It was fascinating because it was like discovering balance and motion for the first time-- again. It was also frustrating because I was putting in a lot of focus and effort, and not moving much. Knowing that I wouldn't learn if I put too much pressure on myself, I paused to refocus. Right... left. I'm fine. I'm exactly how I'm supposed to be. Right... left. I'm a baby learning to walk. This is new. All brand new. Right... left. Be a baby. Be new. Absorb everything.

Right, left, right, left.

After 10 minutes, I slid into a rhythm and managed to move consistently without losing balance. Right, left, right left. Holding myself straight was causing too much resistance. Lean forward, lean into the motion. Right, left, right, llleeeft... I hesitated, slowed too quickly, and lost balance. Keep moving. Right, left, right, le--  My skate hit the ice wrong and jerked me to a sudden stop, and I fell. Keep those skates angled. I had better success when I trusted the rhythm and just kept moving. Even when you slow down, just keep moving. The music over the loudspeakers helped. Right, left, right, left.

Hey, this is like teaching. I paused to reposition my feet and push myself into the rhythm again. I'm scared that my lack of experience will keep me from being successful. But all I have to do is just keep going. Keep moving. Keep practicing. Keep focusing. Before I know it, I'll be doing it without much stress or difficulty at all. It will become familiar and easy, and I'll master the motions and rhythms of the classroom just by keeping moving. If I can skate, I can teach. I can do this. I smiled to myself, and a random girl skating with me in the rink smiled back. I looked at the clock.

I had been skating for fifteen minutes without thinking about it. My time was almost up.

I circled the rink one last time. The coolness of the ice and the breeze of my own motion, the rhythm of the music and the other skaters, the ease and familiarity of the movements that had been strange and scary only minutes earlier, the sensation of being one with the ice and the air... I'm hooked.

I wasn't reluctant to remove my skates, as I had laced them too tightly and they were hurting me. But I was reluctant to walk again. Walking is heavy. You have to push with every step, and fight gravity with every motion. Yuk. Why walk when you can glide?

I hope I was right about teaching.

I hope I have the time on my weekends to skate consistently.

And I hope I never get too old to learn something new.

Culture Relief

One thing that everyone assumes to accompany a move to another country and another culture is something called culture shock. And in many cases, homesickness; but culture shock is generally considered a given.

A week after my arrival, it still hasn't hit. Maybe it's happening and just not shocking me, maybe its flight got delayed and it's just not here yet, or maybe it's there in a million little ways that I'm just not seeing. Or maybe it's just minor compared to all the other things I'm feeling. At any rate, the cultural transition up to this point hasn't been quite as traumatic as one might expect.

Most obviously, there are the things that aren't so different. Most of the things I've been accustomed to having access to, I still have access to.  Most of the pharmacies have a fine selection. Same with the hygiene product aisles. The names and brands may be different, but the product is there. You just have to do a little exploring. And while there may not be one on every block, there are a couple Starbuckses in the major shopping malls of the city. And a lot of the signs and restaurant menus include English along with the Russian and the Kazakh, which helped in those moments in the first few days when I would feel a little lost. And my phone has an English language option, and I have access to the internet and all of its helpful features.

But more noteworthy is how unshocked I am by many of the different things. How comfortable they are, and in many cases, downright pleasant. Like stepping outside and being suddenly immersed in a language that I forgot I knew. Or having cars stop for me at the crosswalk because pedestrians have right of way. Or having ready access to public transportation, going anywhere in the city for a dime. Or buying fresh produce at the outdoor market two blocks away, and having practically anything I might need within a 10-minute walk. Or walking everywhere, and having the time to because places are close together and appointments are far apart. Or buying antibiotics at the pharmacy without needing a prescription. Or seeing every brand of bottled water come in two choices at the store-- sparkling mineral or plain. Or passing a store with clothing and footwear in delightful styles that I haven't seen in so long I was afraid they didn't exist anymore. Or reading a menu where "salads" means anything made with raw vegetables and takes up two pages; where rice and buckwheat are the staple sides, hot tea and fruit juice are the basic beverage options, and lamb and fish dominate the menu followed closely by chicken. Or adjusting the climate in my apartment by opening the window to the fresh air, because the heat is on all winter at the same temperature via a hot water radiator, built into the apartment courtesy of the city. Or walking home from work in the evening, surrounded by other people who are also walking-- home, or to meet up with friends, or just as a pastime, because walking in the evening with your friends or with your kid or with your grandpa is just as normal as watching TV. Or interacting with anyone, literally anyone-- and not being haunted by the unsettling uncertainty of whether I read their non-verbal cues correctly.

So far, most of the major changes in my environment have felt less like a shock and more of a relief. Like I've been living for a really long time in a world where things were a little off, and now I'm suddenly in a place where things fit. Of course, most of these things are unfamiliar in the sense that I'm not accustomed to them-- but things that I won't mind adjusting to. It's weird-- like learning to become someone that I've sort of never been, but that I've also sort of been all along.

There is, as with any cultural transition, a list of not-so-great things. I'm still trying to catch up mentally on the fact that I'm actually here, and catch up physically in the sleep department. No, I haven't yet found a brand of razor that I like, or a place to recycle, and Pandora doesn't work in this part of the world. But I really think I'll be okay.

I do miss Pandora.

Five Seconds

It takes about a week for jet-lag to diminish. For your body to fully recover to the point that you don't feel tired randomly at any hour of the day takes a little bit longer. I'm not sure how long exactly, I'll let you know when it does for me.

Getting in at 3 AM after roughly 18 hours of flights and layovers makes everything sort of surreal. Being suddenly surrounded by a language and visual cues and a culture that is at once both foreign in the way of something you are not accustomed to, and familiar in the way of a recurring dream that you're convinced is actually a memory, can have that affect as well. Being greeted by a family member and one of his friends is reassuring, especially when it's taking your bags much longer than they should to come through the baggage claim. Seeing the exact airport building you knew as a kid, but revamped and modernized after 16 years, is nostalgic.

Arriving at an apartment that's all yours with the rent and utilities already paid for the month and food in the kitchen, where everything is freshly cleaned and readied for you, where all you have to do is to take a shower and wash the transition off of you, and to fall asleep in a new place that you can start turning into a home... That feeling is indescribable.

Getting in at 3AM after roughly 18 hours of flights and layovers makes it really easy to go to sleep.

Lift off

There's nothing quite like the moment when the airplane lifts off.

I like to sink back hard into my seat and close my eyes as the engines roar and the plane picks up speed. As the pressure of the acceleration hugs me tighter and tighter, I always think I can concentrate really hard and pinpoint the exact moment when the wheels leave the ground, by feel alone, without looking. But it's always too exciting and just before liftoff, my eyes fly open because I don't want to miss the view. The ground shrinks away quickest within the first five seconds after liftoff, and if you aren't careful, you'll miss it.

As I'm sitting, pre-takeoff, listening to the flight attendant describe safety features that flash me back to my childhood, my mind wanders. What would I do in the event of oxygen loss, or an emergency evacuation? Would I get all panicky, or would my survival sense kick in and keep me calm? But a crash is highly unlikely. A shiver runs up my spine at the possibility of a terrorist or an international super-villain being on board. Then I shake myself. I watch too many spy shows.  The flight attendants are done now, and we are just waiting to take off. My mind wanders again. I wonder what it's like to be a flight attendant. Would I enjoy a job like that?

But when the plane taxis to the runway and starts to move faster and faster, all of that is forgotten. For a brief moment, nothing else exists but me and the incredible laws of physics giving me the only superpower I've ever daydreamed of having.

As I'm sitting a couple hours into the flight at about 40,000 feet, cramped between the window and the impossibly fidgety man sitting next to me, I give up on the travel magazine. An hour ago, it seemed a lovely alternative after 23 games of blackjack on the mini-screen in front of me. But when you've re-read the same sentence five times and still don't register what it says, you know it's time to let it go back into its pocket on the seat back in front of you, and make life easier for both of you. There are still clouds outside of the window, just like there were two hours ago. And the movie selection hasn't changed either. So I have been traveling for 10 hours, and I do have another long layover and a third flight to catch after this one, so I should probably try to rest. Now, how do I sleep in a chair that only reclines about 3 inches? Maybe if I tilt my head just so... no, that hurts my neck. Maybe if I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn with my side against the seat and my knees against the wall of the plane... nope. Maybe if I slouch back and scootch my tailbone forward I can rest my folded legs on the seat in front of me... okay, my chiropractor would freak out, but it's comfortable and it will work for at least a little while. My muscles relax and my eyes close. The guys behind me are speaking Russian. It sounds like home, and the words are familiar, even though I have forgotten what half of them mean. Amsterdam can't be their final, and the Russian speaking world is a big place. I wonder if they are headed to the same city I am...

I wake up to the flight attendant's voice. With a cart of breakfast trays in front of her that look delicious, she's inquiring of the gentleman two seats in front of me whether he wants cream in his coffee. Perfect timing to wake up. I'm almost next!  I somehow find a way to stretch every major cramped spot in my body without leaving my seat.  Nope, the cabin is chilly. Keeping the blanket on. I unlatch my table from the seat-back in front of me, and contemplate whether I want tea or juice with breakfast. Tea, definitely tea. Now that I have two hours of sleep behind me, I feel incredibly sharp mentally. Sharp enough to think fully formed thoughts, like how remarkable it is to be at 40,000 feet and in a livable environment. What's this container? Ooh, yogurt. And how in less than a day I'll be entering another life. One I've never lived before. One I've been planning and looking forward to for years. As soon as my last flight touches down in Almaty, it will start. But with yet another flight ahead of me, right now, above the clouds, so far removed from the world, I'm still in transition. And I'm grateful for every cramped boring minute of it. I'll use the time to breathe, and brace myself for what's about to happen.

Because when that last plane touches down and I step off onto the tarmac, I will be in the moment of a different lift-off.  Into a new chapter of my life. And I if I'm not braced for it, I'll miss the first five seconds.

And that's something I won't be able to get back.