Culture Curve

The recap of my euro trip is in the works (it’s very long) but for the time being, this is what is on my mind at the moment.

In January, at our conference, InterFuture had us draw “culture curves”  which plotted how we would feel being on locale week by week and then for the two weeks after we get home.  To this point mine has been right on target.

For the first two weeks, I said that I would be somewhat depressed, as I usually get homesick at the beginning of a trip rather than in the middle or at the end.  This, with no help from the weather and loneliness at the time, ended up being the case and although I was having fun, I was rather homesick.  Next, I said that in the weeks following that I would start to make friends and really spend time getting into my project once I was adjusted to my new surroundings.  The next high point of my trip would be traveling Europe and the peak of my excitement would be April when it gets nice and baseball really starts up.  Coming home, I assumed, would be bittersweet because I was finally watching baseball and now I would have that end of trip feeling, but at least I would see my friends and family again.

By the time I started traveling at the beginning of March, I had my project all but finished and had hit the amount of interviews I had intended to conduct, so I was traveling with a clean conscience which made my travel even better.  Being home now, I am thoroughly excited with how warm it is (sorry for the snow Boston) and getting ready to travel through Holland and make my final push through the next month before I come back to Boston.  I am amazed at just how accurate my curve was, but things are starting happen that were not predicted. Not by me anyway. 

Past IFers warned of subconsciously missing normal things and hitting a point where you become overwhelmed with the nuances of your local.  For example, one staff member recounted that she was tired of the amount of butter used in Ireland; essentially just everyday things that after two months away from home begin to wear on you.  Mine was Heineken. In Paris, Ashlee and I got caught in the rain and when we returned to our hostel we just wanted to change into dry clothes and have a drink.  When I got down into the hostel bar I looked at the tap: Heineken and Amstel.  Nope.  In the fridge a bunch of Italian and Mexican bottled beers.  Nope.  On the side there was a row of Budweiser, one of the first times I had seen it in Europe and for the first time I caved and had something American in Europe.

They told me it would happen, that around this time I would need a stash of American candy or to go to a McDonalds or something like that.  Comfort food.  To be honest, I don’t venture often to the golden arches in America and when I do go here, I still get a McKroket – typical Dutch fast food.  It’s getting to that point.  With each day in Amsterdam I love it more and more, but more time in Amsterdam means more time away from home, which means I’m hitting a point where I really notice that I’m not home and I’m starting to itch to go back.

Other things are getting to that point too.  I just ran out of shampoo and face wash and had to buy more soap, etc.  My pants are becoming worn and faded and the rest of my wardrobe makes it clear that I’ve been living out of a suitcase for two months.  Also, that nice little nest egg in my bank account that I left with is significantly smaller than when I arrived here. 

This is the way life should be.  If everyone had the opportunity to travel so freely like this, the world would be a little less violent and a little more friendly.  Unfortunately, this isn’t real life.  People have to work, people have to make money and go to school and do all the things I’ve avoided the last two months….I just lost my train of thought; as I write this my neighbor is reading me a news article about UN employees who have been decapitated due to an American burning the Koran or some such bullshit in the real world. So it goes. I’ve spent the last two months living in my head trying to make sense of all of these experiences, but right now The Illiterate English Major has nothing intelligent to say.