Nostalgia, How I've Missed You

I used to think that I didn't get homesick. When I went to Spain, I very rarely felt homesick, and never acutely. After all, I'm so good at making new friends! I love adjusting to new cultures! I just dive right in! Rah rah rah!

I'm only now discovering my hidden ability to be acutely homesick. Even while I'm having a good time, I have to work hard to banish the thought that I would have a better time if people I love from home were with me. Even when I'm doing fun things like going to an English camp by a huge lake in central Pahang, I have to push aside pangs of nostalgia for lakes in upstate New York. After all, there were more skippable pebbles on the shores of Lake Cayuga that time in May when Judah and Kate and I took a mini-vacation to Trumansburg and the falls. And wouldn't it be more fun to walk around a night market and try new foods if all my usual food-trying partners in crime from Philadelphia were by my side? (You know who you are.)

Part of this nostalgia is motivated by an honest and intense affection for the people and places that make up my life in the U.S. Being here has made me realize once and for all something that, at some level, I knew all along: I do want Philadelphia to be my home for the foreseeable future. Provincialism be damned, I like the town.

On another level, though, I think the nostalgia is a reaction to discomfort. I haven't really figured out how to make a life here yet, and I have to keep reminding myself that I really haven't been in Kuantan for very long. Even though I've said a lot of cheerful things here about invitations from teachers and outings with couch surfers, I do spend a lot of weeknights in my apartment reading, staring at a computer screen, skyping friends from home, or making up small errands (usually revolving around food--specifically, Chinese buns) to get me out of the house in the evening. Many afternoons I'm so worn out after school by some combination of the heat, teaching, and being in an unfamiliar place that I conk out for sweaty naps that stretch on for hours. It takes time to form meaningful friendships, and I'm definitely not there yet.

When I was in Spain, I spoke the language (more or less), and the culture was much more similar to the U.S. I guess I should expect to feel some level of culture shock as the "honeymoon period" in a new place wears off. Things just take a lot of effort here, and I never know if I'm acting appropriately. There are a lot of mishaps.

I spent a week texting an ETA with the same name as my landlady before it dawned on us that something wasn't right. I was really annoyed by her noncommittal responses, like "I don't have hot water in my shower, either" and "Have you talked to your mentor?" and "That seems strange" until I realized that she was, in fact, not my landlady at all. Just a poor, bewildered ETA who was randomly fielding all my housing complaints for a week.

There seems to be some kind of god of inefficiency who rules my life in Malaysia. If I try to be too ambitious in one day, it angers him and he shows his displeasure. Yesterday, for instance, I found myself with a lot of excess, nervous energy after my 3 hour drive home from English camp in the morning. I stopped to buy groceries at Giant (what a lovely, western store! with so many things! so clean! Nirwana Hypermarket in my neighborhood pales in comparison). Feeling pleased with myself, I rolled home with a head full of plans for the day. The first thing I did was enter the apartment to realize that my roommate, who was away for the weekend, had accidentally flipped the main fuse when she left. I've done this before, thinking it was an efficient way to turn off all the lights. Unfortunately, it also turns off the power to the refrigerator. Thankfully, the only casualties this time were some weird durian cream puffs. I put away the groceries, dutifully tallied the bill between myself and Kara, and put in a load of laundry. Big mistake. Doing laundry offends the god of inefficiency very much. The last time I tried to do laundry, I discovered that there is a hose connected to my laundry machine that must be pointed towards my drain in the bathroom, or else it will flood part of the apartment. This resulted in an evening call to my landlady, and her arrival at 10:30 pm with her husband and a loud handyman who all laughed at me and hung around raucously inspecting the apartment while I tried to tell them, to no avail, to be quiet because Kara was in bed with the flu. (It would've been nice if she had told me about the output hose when I moved in...)

This time, I got home from English camp with big ideas about cleaning up and doing laundry and writing a blog post and all these wonderful things, only to find out that the water was shut off in my neighborhood. I'm writing this two weeks later, mind you, and I can report that this has become a regular, and very annoying, occurrence. Basically, the water, the western toilet, and the internet can never seem to all be working at the same time. At this point I shoot for two out of three. I was going to spin a long tale about me going to the beach and getting all turned around and going down one ways trying to find parking, then painstakingly rolling down my car window to talk to the parking lot attendant only to find that it takes about 10 minutes to roll back up, etc. but that's not super interesting.

Today I accomplished a lot. I got in a load of laundry before the water cut out, I skyped Kathleen for a solid 10 minutes before the internet slowed to snail speed, and I even made it to the post office where I made a fool of myself in every possible way. (Oh, you need to take a number? Oh, it's gross to lick stamps? That's what that sponge full of water is for? Oh, I shouldn't squeeze it out all over the desk before I use it? Oh, did I park in a spot for motorcycles?, etc.) Basically I need to let go of all my ideas that my self-worth is based on efficiency, and accept that I'm going to do a lot of dumb things that don't make me a bad person.

Briefly, other news since the last update:
-I helped with an English camp in Kuantan with really great, friendly kids. Being well-rested makes a big difference for how well I do with kids. Afterwards, I hung out at the beach with other ETAs for hours until sunset. We scrambled around on the rocks and talked and bobbed in the calm sea. At one point when I was floating and looking at the sunset beyond my outstretched feet, I thought, "All those long nights in the library in college got me here. This is it. This is the pay-off." That may or may not be logical and/or really conceited, but that's what I thought.
-I led the whole school in a rousing rendition of "You Make Me Wanna Shout" today at 7:15 am that had an astounding 15-20% participation rate. (Poor kids. The unfun things I inflict on them.)
-I received the advice to "be more fierce." Probably good advice.
-I did some good lessons and some bad lessons, got really frustrated with kids and was really impressed by them, got 10 kids to show up to writing workshop and actually write for 2 hours, accidentally scolded kids to speak English when they WERE speaking English--only with terrible accents, had a girl cry to me about friends and stress at recess then tell me later she felt "peaceful" now that she'd confided in me, felt like a publicly terrible teacher who can't control a class when the principal walked into one of my toughest classes, and finally found out what happens when the discipline teacher comes to your class.
-I celebrated a lovely St. Patrick's Day Eve with ETAs in town for English camp.
-I accidentally let the battery drain on my car, but had it magically replaced by the kindness of semi-strangers.
-I accompanied a teacher to a yoga class run by an older Chinese Malaysian woman who bobbed around in a leotard and barked orders at us like a drill sergeant. It's so hot here that basically any yoga class automatically becomes hot yoga, and no one really uses mats except for the lying down portion of the class. Aside from being inflexible, I was literally too slippery from sweat to do several of the poses without sliding around on the linoleum like an overeager and uncoordinated puppy. I think I'll go back, despite the fact that it's just one more thing that makes me feel incompetent in this country.

Anyway, now I'm going to Indonesia, so the next update should be about that.