Context...but Usually Not?

I've spent a lot of the past two months putting together applications for Ph.D. programs (which is terrifying and exciting all at once!) The applications were as much work as applications usually are, but this time, one piece was different.

GPA.

This is an issue for a few reasons. UK universities have a different grading scale than American schools do, and I'm still figuring out exactly how to interpret and translate that. More importantly, I don't actually have a GPA here yet. Our semester isn't over, and in my program (among others), our grades are 100% based on the final exam. We've had at most one assignment per class all semester, and while we got feedback to help us improve for the exam, they didn't count toward official grades. So I have no official grades and no official GPA...and a little box in the application that only accepts numbers between 0 and 4.0. What am I supposed to do? Try to input a paragraph explanation into a box that wants a single number?

Still, this isn't that important, right? It's a special case. Just one of the quirks of trying to navigate school systems in two different countries.

I was thinking about this as I sat down in the final lecture for my methodology course. That class was about research paradigms, about how we all bring something different to a research project because we all come from somewhere different. It's important, they explained, to be reflexive about our role: why did I ask the questions I asked? Why didn't I ask those other questions? What worldview has informed my research?

Once I started thinking about this, I couldn't stop seeing similar situations everywhere. I notice it in debate rounds, when nobody in the round questions the assumption that spreading Western values in developing nations is a laudable goal. I notice it in conversations, when I mention an example that seems universal to me but my friend from China has never heard of. I notice it in news articles, books, research articles, Facebook posts, and just about everywhere I look. Just like my GPA dilemma, most of these instances weren't accompanied by a paragraph-long explanation for context.

What's funny, though, is that just like in the GPA dilemma, these instances didn't have room for an explanation...but that's mostly because I didn't ask for one. Think about the last time a reference went over your head or an assumption didn't ring true; did you say something? Or did you smile and nod and pretend it all made sense?

The urge to keep quiet is understandable. It's embarrassing to admit that we don't know something; as an American who recently guessed that Spain was a founding member of the EU despite the fact that I know full well that Spain was a dictatorship until forty years ago...yup, I'm familiar with embarrassment. There's plenty of other reasons to keep quiet, too: not wanting to interrupt the conversation, figuring I can look it up on my own later, etc.

Since the GPA dilemma, though, I've started trying to silence the part of my brain that fears embarrassment and public shaming and instead just ask. Speak up. Admit what I don't know and ask for clarification. It's not easy; sometimes it's downright awkward. 

Most of the responses have been simple, quick explanations (gracefully conducted, nonetheless; imagine my surprise when I realized that most people don't spend their days looking for ways to laugh at me!) Sometimes, though, my requests for more information have led to fascinating conversations, far more in-depth than I could have anticipated. When I admit my ignorance, people answer my questions. When I acknowledge my lack of context, people are more than willing to share and tell me about the world through their eyes.

Gradually, as we pay more attention to the moments when we lack context, it becomes easier to notice when others are feeling the same way. When I've said something that makes sense to my worldview but not to everyone's or when I'm the one who should be adding a paragraph of explanation. My hope, though, is that by noticing these moments, by adding context or even just recognizing that context is needed, I'll learn something about myself and about the rest of the world. Not that I'm particularly good at this yet; it's a new endeavor for me. I'll let you know how it goes!

For now, I encourage you to give this endeavor a try with me. Sure, it's easier to stay silent and Google it later, but our world doesn't need more Googling or more quick context from an algorithm. We need more understanding, more communication, more connection on issues that aren't always easy. The more we ask, the better our conversations become. So let's ask, shall we?

Home For Christmas

I am not, technically, home for Christmas. Except that, technically, I kind of am. So where does that leave us?

We're spending this Christmas in London, which is our home for now. When we moved here, we decided that staying put for Christmas made sense, based on cost and time and a budget for vacation days and all the other things that come with being a sensible adult. 

In all the years I've spent traveling, this is only the second time I haven't made it back to my Nevada home for Christmas. Sensible and adult decision or not, I miss the holiday season with family as much now as I did then. And yet, this year has very little in common with that year. Christmas in Afghanistan was very different (which I wrote about in detail back then, so check out that post if you want to know more!); Christmas in London is a lot like Christmas in the States. The streets and shops are dressed out for the season, and the same Christmas carols play everywhere you turn. The seasonal aisles at the grocery store look about the same, and while the sales advertise prices in a different currency, the implicit pressure to buy the perfect gift seems universal.

There are little differences, of course. We learned this when we tried to find lemon jello to make a jello salad for a holiday party and when we bought cards that say 'Happy Christmas.' I'm learning how to substitute for ingredients that can't be bought here, and I can't tell you how many mince pies we've been served in the last month.

Building a home in a new place, though, isn't about buying toffee ingredients or splurging on a baby Christmas tree for the living room of your tiny apartment. Any newly married couple goes through the same process; how do we meld our traditions and our families and our expectations into one holiday to share? In that sense, we're lucky. This year, there's just us. Some gatherings with friends and classmates, but mostly just the two of us, building new traditions together.

Last month, we had a group of friends over to celebrate Thanksgiving. We cooked a turkey and all the fixings, and our traditional American dinner was enjoyed by friends from the UK, China, India, Poland, Brazil, and Denmark. We ate and talked and laughed and ate some more, and it was a wonderful holiday.  

This is the kind of tradition I'm so excited to be starting, and it's the kind that will last no matter where we call home. I've always loved the story of Christmas, not just because of the celebration of Jesus' birth but also because of those who were celebrating at that first Christmas. It wasn't just Jesus' family; it was also strangers and travelers who became family. Family is a huge part of Christmas for me, but even when we're far away, Skype and email and group chats mean we get to share their holiday. At the same time, we get to share our Christmas with friends here, with strangers or friends of friends that we don't know well, with travelers who also don't have a big family gathering to attend. That's the thing about being an expat; you learn to make a family of those around you, to make traditions wherever you are.

That feels like a lovely way to start our life as a newly married couple. Honoring our traditions with Christmas Mass and homemade toffee and stuffing each other's stockings, but also being open to new traditions. Celebrating with family from afar, but also opening our home to celebrate here with anyone and everyone who wants to come. Relishing our Nevada home even as we make London feel like home for now.

I am home for Christmas.

Please Tell Me You're Okay

It's been such a long time since I've posted; it feels very weird to be on here again. To be honest, there's lots of reasons I stopped writing and a few reasons I'm starting again, but the most important is this: I try to be a person who speaks when I have something to say and doesn't speak when I don't.

I started this blog the first time I moved away from the US, and since then, I generally found that when I lived overseas, I had things to say. Interesting things, I thought, and I hope some of you felt the same.

This year, I'm living overseas again, this time for education in London. It's a very different experience than any of my other international trips, but more on that another day.

I resurrected this blog today in part because a few days ago, there was a "terror-related" attack here in London. A man attacked others with a knife, and two people lost their lives too soon. I'm betting you already know this, so I won't cover more details, because that's not the point of this post anyway.

I heard about the attack when I got a text from a family member back in the US asking if I was okay. One text, then another, then more. Messages from worried family and friends, all with the same request: please tell me you're okay.

It was quick and easy to send back reassuring messages, but I couldn't stop myself from rolling my eyes a bit. What an overreaction. In a city of eight and a half million people, what were the odds that we were involved in the attack?

But then, on my way home, I started thinking about all those messages. About family and friends and people I count as friends but hadn't talked to in a few weeks or months, all of them waking up and seeing London on the news and thinking of us. Statistically likely or not, all of them worrying that something had happened to us.

It's pretty amazing to have that many people think about you, worry about you, love you that much. In many ways, those texts, and the outpouring of support across London for those involved in the attack, epitomize the best of humanity. We worry about each other, because we love each other, even from far away.

I'm very thankful to have so many people who love me enough to worry about me and to text me. It's a good reminder that it never hurts to check on someone - after a terrorist attack, after a busy week or semester or year, or maybe just because. These moments make us feel connected, and our world can always use a bit more of that.

Pie in the Sky, For Some of Us

Months ago, when I was still in Morocco, I had a "pie-in-the-sky" conversation with my friend Fatima. Or at least, I tried to.

"If you could change anything about our town, what would you change?" I asked her. (In hindsight, I'm rather proud of that sentence structure. It took me many moons to learn "if" statements in Darija!)

She gave me a blank look.

I tried to give her an example. "Me, I would build a library. A giant library, in our rural town where kids tell me they don't like reading because there's nothing good to read. I would put in comfy chairs and all my favorite books, and I'd have storytime every single week."

She gave me another blank look. "We can't build a library."

"Well, not right now, we can't," I agreed. "But if I didn't have to worry about time or money or anything else, I would build a library. What would you do?"

It took a while, but I finally coaxed an answer out of her. She didn't part with it lightly, as though she'd only barely let herself think this thought, as though she'd never expected to say it out loud. "I'd have a wedding salon," she said. She told me that she'd learn to do wedding henna and hair and maybe even sell fancy wedding dresses.

"That's a great idea!" I told her.

She shrugged. "It won't happen."

I started pressing her further: why not? Who says? What would it take? Have you heard of microloans for women?

She was already shaking her head, sadly. "You don't understand."

She was right. I grew up in a family, in a town, in a country, where I was taught to dream. I was taught that I should go after my dreams, and that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. If I wanted to start a wedding business, it'd take me a few months to figure out the logistics, but you can bet I would figure them out and I would have my business.

Fatima didn't grow up the way I did. Her family pulled her out of school in high school, because her brothers said she'd learned everything a girl needed to know. She is one of the quickest learners I've ever met, one of the first to recognize someone else's need and go meet it, and she's been raised to think her life begins and ends in the town in which she was born. I loved - I still love - that little town, but my heart grieves for Fatima, and for all the girls whose dreams are so buried that they don't even know how to access them.

This week, Fatima has been on my mind. Because of the attacks in Paris and Mali and Lebanon and elsewhere, because of my current students, because of Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for the many people in my life who encouraged me to dream. I'm thankful for anyone, anywhere, who is using the events of the past few weeks to fuel not violence but passion. For those who see needs in the world and meet them, for those who fight for others' right to dream, for those who speak against the darkness that sometimes seems so all-encompassing.

Fatima told me a few weeks later that I was the first person to ever ask her something like that, and she told me shyly that she couldn't get my question out of her head. As far as I know, she hasn't started a wedding salon. For all I know, she never will. But I'd be willing to bet that when Fatima has a daughter, that daughter will graduate from high school. She might go to college. She might start a wedding salon, or go to med school, or go to the moon.

Whose dreams have you encouraged today?

Lights, Sirens, and Bending Over

I rode in an ambulance for the first time a few weeks ago. 

It was my clinical ride-along for the EMT class I’m taking, and it was amazing. A lot of the details can’t be shared on a blog, not unless I want to get sued. A lot of my feelings don’t belong on a public blog, not when I’ve fought hard to keep from teenage-angst-ifying it. Suffice it to say, it’s been a rough few months since the Peace Corps sent me home, and I’ve spent a lot of that time feeling pretty lost. This ambulance shift wasn’t a magic cure by any means, but it was a pretty incredible (if very LONG)  night.

Perhaps the best moment came at about 3 pm. It’d been a slow afternoon, which is odd for a Saturday in Reno. I’d had plenty of time to study, and our calls had been rather few and far between.

Then dispatch hailed us. Priority 1 patient, we were told. Which means Hurry.

So we did. Lights and siren and all. Racing down the highway, cars pulling out of our way, people staring as we passed.

That part was pretty cool. But you know what was cooler? The fact that someone called us because she needed medical care, and we could go. Just like that. Minutes after her call, we were on scene, with oxygen and IVs and heart monitors and a vehicle that could transport her to the hospital if she needed.

I’ve never really thought before about how amazing that is.

Then, a week ago, I had to get my appendix out. It was pretty strange, one of those moments you never think will happen to you. And after stalling an embarrassingly long period of time because, well, I’m me, I went to the ER. Five minutes later, a nurse was examining me. Fifteen minutes later, they were scanning me, and first thing the next morning, I was in surgery. It’s pretty astounding, especially when I think that I was sent home from Morocco a few months ago partially because I lived too far from medical care.

There are a lot of things wrong with the US health care system, but you gotta admit, lights and sirens and available ERs and immediate surgery… it’s really cool. And amidst all my groaning about bed rest (ugh!) and the bills that I’m sure are coming, it’s good to remember that. Every time bending over makes me wince, I remember, and I’m thankful.

Grief and Thankfulness: When Peace Corps Sent Me Home

Last Tuesday, I got a phone call from the Peace Corps medical staff in Morocco. The moment the doctor said hello, I knew what she was calling about. It was her voice, the kind of voice my mom always used when she had bad news. Full of apology and regret.

Sure enough. Peace Corps had decided to medically separate me, which in PC jargon means that they'd decided I have a medical condition (asthma) that cannot sufficiently be addressed in Morocco, that staying for another year poses harm to my health, and that they are sending me home. Now.

I was actually prepared for this. They first mentioned it last fall, then more strongly a month ago. I went through an appeal process, tried to keep hoping I'd be allowed to stay. But I'm a realist, and I knew. I'd started making lists in my head: reasons I was happy to go home, reasons I wouldn't miss Morocco, people I needed to tell, items I needed to pack. I'd begun designing contingency plans: this person might be able to help take over this class, that person could help me finish that competition, I needed to print these documents in order for this counterpart to successfully continue with that project. I reminded myself how unhappy I was in Morocco in the beginning, how much medical issues have frustrated and inconvenienced and sometimes scared me this year, how nice it was to be home for Christmas and how it could be nice to be home again. Plans, logic, lists. Using reason to counter emotion. It usually works.

Not this time. I was not at all prepared for the wave of emotion that swamped me, for the tears that started to spill almost immediately. I was embarrassed to be crying on the phone, embarrassed to find myself tearing up again later when I told my sitemate, embarrassed by how easily and often I choked up over the next few days. 

It took almost a week to realize: I'd had this reaction only three times in my life, each time when a friend passed away. This was grief. Hovering in the periphery of my consciousness constantly, jumping in during logical moments (breaking the news to friends, receiving the official exit paperwork, saying goodbye to my host family) and during odd ones (getting cat-called, taking a bucket bath, hurrying home to get out of sandstorm, lying on my roof under the stars.) Big moments and little, the grief hit me again and again, leaving me emotionally raw for days on end. 

As you can imagine, this was not quite the frame of mind I'd wanted for my last few days in my town. I was busy and stressed, trying to do in four days what I could have used two weeks to do well. I was irritable and tired and always on the verge of tears. I found myself wishing I could just leave. Get out of that weird half-existence and just go.

Then, on Saturday, my two best friends in site came over to spend the day with me. They helped me pack a little, but mostly we just hung out. Played Settlers of Catan and talked about life and made pizza and laughed. A lot. At the flour dusting my shirt when I mixed dough too enthusiastically, at our half-hearted plans to hide me where Peace Corps couldn't find me and thus couldn't send me home, at the squeal one of them emitted when I asked if she wanted to keep my exercise ball. We reminisced about the year and all the good times we've had, and one of them told me she's changed a lot this year and it's because of me.

That was the beginning, but it wasn't the end. The tears and the grief were pushed away by a new feeling: thankfulness. When other volunteers stepped up to agree to continue the programs I've worked so hard on, when I met a young university graduate who was looking to gain experience and was thrilled to take over my English classes, when friends set their plans aside to make time for me before I left. When mere acquaintances reached out with words of comfort, and students without two dirhams to rub together gave me gifts, and I paged back through my journal and remembered the good moments this year. When I filled out my "Description of Service" form and realized just how much I have accomplished. 

That, I think, is the key to making sense of this. I'm still grieving, still angry and frustrated and wanting to rail at the injustice of it. But none of those emotions are productive and none were contributing to making my last days in Morocco happy ones. So instead of focusing on what I'm losing and what I won't get to do, I'm doing my best to focus on what I gained and what I did. What I learned. Who I met and will never forget. Because, in spite of everything, this year has held more goods than bads, and for that, I am so very thankful.

When It Feels Like Home To Me

When I walk down to souq first thing Sunday morning and am greeted by sellers who know me by name. The spice seller tells me I'm probably out of garlic, which I am, and tells me a joke as he sells me some. The butcher waves, and the candyman with his little cart of nuts and Bonbas gives me a shy smile and a quiet "Good morning." The vegetable vendor peels an orange and hands me half with a wink, and juice runs down my chin as I bite into it. We chat as I pick out cucumbers and squash, beans and potatoes, tomatoes that are going out of season but aren't gone yet.

Fruits and vegetables at souq.

My friend the spice salesman. He asked me to take this picture!

When I bike past the hanut and see my little host sister buying milk in little plastic bags. She flags me down with a delighted grin, because it's been six weeks since we saw each other. I have errands to run and so much work to do, but she begs to run errands with me and I can't say no; I've missed her too. She hums cheerful tunes and finds reasons to hold my hand or bump my shoulder as we walk around town. I'm grateful for her help as we carry everything home. Her reward is a cup of hot chocolate, and my reward is her wide-eyed look and subsequent smile as she tastes her first sip. Cultural exchange, it's called.

When my neighbor sees me arrive and shows up half an hour later with a plate of food. When the young women who are partnering with me on a girls leadership camp stop me in the street, spending fifteen minutes asking about my health, my house post-flood, the health of my family in America whom they've never met before we finally meander onto the topic of the camp that starts in four days. When little kids accost me when I walk out my door, not to throw rocks or beg for money as they did when I first arrived but to invite me to play soccer, show off how clean and happy is the puppy we rescued together six months ago, beg me to resume ballet classes daba daba. When I get six invitations to lunch in one day, and I repay them in chocolate chip cookies.

When I have a free half our before class my first day back, and one of my students invites me on a walk into the desert. We "happen upon" her family, who pat the dirt and invite me for tea. The youngest daughter introduces her friends, 10-year-old Fatima and 11-year-old Ilham, and the four of us lie on our backs to search for airplanes in the sky and dream about where they could take us.

When I go for a walk or drive outside the town and see the desert in full bloom. Hills awash with color, blanketed in purple and yellow wildflowers offset by plants that no one can tell me the names of. The oasis, with palm trees as far as the eye can see, and the sand dunes, cold to the touch. And above them all, the hills that are almost mountains, their jagged rocks thrust into the sky in a Lion-King-esque architecture. 

When friend after friend greets me in the street on my first day back: my landlord, who tells me he paid my electric bill while I was gone so they wouldn't shut off my electricity. The man who works for the electric company, who tells me the same thing even though he just overheard my first conversation. The mechanic who fills my bicycle tires, the youth center director, the chief of police. Students from camp last November who speak to me in English because exams are getting close and they want to practice. Ladies from the women's center, who kiss me three times and hug me and pull me back to get a good look at me and then tell me I'm looking nice and fat today. Taxi drivers and furniture salesmen. People I play soccer with, go to karate with, buy food from, met once at a party. I don't even remember all their names, but they greet me with wide smiles and seem genuinely pleased that I've returned. 

When night falls and I'm cozy in my little house. When I take my fuzzy blanket and curl up in my hammock on the roof.  The sky is indescribably expansive, and little worries fade away in the face of its immensity. Who am I to worry? When the cool night air brushes my cheek and a lone meteor shoots across the sky and I rock gently, thanking God for bringing me back here.

When the bus rounds the corner and I see the lights of my town in the distance. When I expect to feel lonely and sad and anxious about going home to my empty house and dealing with lack of water and intermittent electricity and life in another language, but I don't. When I see the lights in the distance and a little spark flares inside me, because it actually feels like home.