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.

Northern Horizon

To everything there is a season.

A couple months ago, I lost my primary job. It wasn't a job I had wanted to keep for life, but it's never fun to lose a job. I regrouped and started revamping my resume and hitting the job market, as I had been doing an average of once a year for the past six years. But this time it was different. I had had a standing job offer, a job I wanted in a place I wanted to live, for the past five years-- the only drawback was that I would have to move from the only place I'd ever lived long enough as an adult to feel at home. And I'd have to move move. Like to the other side of the planet move. And I hate moving, I hate saying goodbye. But as I sat waiting for my turn in an interview at yet another restaurant job, it suddenly didn't make sense anymore. It was time.

I took the teaching job.

A couple weeks ago I stood in the doorway of my beloved room. The purple walls were bare, the white windowsills were empty. The bed was stripped and the only thing sitting on the freshly swept hardwood floor were three large boxes taped shut, and a black trunk, all full of things I couldn't take with me. "Goodbye, room," I whispered, and the corners echoed the goodbye sadly back to me. Suddenly all the tears I had held in from the last six weeks-- through all the packing and saying goodbye to friends, giving hugs and gifts and notes and goodbye speeches with a smile and promises to stay in touch-- suddenly threatened a massive thunderstorm. As I hugged Pepper for the last time, they came. They drenched her furry head, and the poor thing licked my face sympathetically, not understanding what was wrong. They didn't stop. I managed to find the door and the porch steps despite my blurred vision. I shoved my suitcase into the backseat and pulled out onto the road. And as I hit interstate 20 and passed the Lexington exits for the last time, my heart was finally able to let go.

A few days later, I said goodbye to my car. My one constant safe spot through all the moves and jobs and life experiences of the past 6 years. We'd had a wonderful last road trip together, and that morning I cried again and wished her the best new owner who would love her as she deserves. I handed the key to the lady behind the desk. And that was when something deep in my soul somewhere embraced the reality that, at that moment, I no longer had an external home.

A couple hours after that, I was at the gate waiting on my flight to Amsterdam.

I was flying north. I had a nothing but a carryon beside me, my lucky boots on my feet, and a heart full of memories.

And a pair of brown eyes looking hopefully to the future.