culture shock

While I was in Athens last week, it became abundantly clear to me how much Albania has impacted me in the past six months. I stepped off the bus, and all of the sudden, everything looked sterile. The environment was everything but livable. I felt like I was in a futuristic spaceship. Of course, it was everything my home back in Kansas is. It was nothing I haven’t seen before. It was not abnormal in any way to my lifetime. However, it was everything but normal for my life as I know it now.

All of the sudden there was an overload of conversations that I could just listen in on if I so chose, should I? All of the sudden there was no privacy for the conversations that I was having, because I knew that everyone around me could listen in to what I was saying as well, are they listening? Who knows? What I do know is that, all of the sudden, I wasn’t having to think through everything I said, or process everything that was said to me. I just did. As exhausting as life is when you don’t understand, I think that it is much more exhausting sometimes to be understood. To be in a place where it’s not that I have to think through everything that I am saying because I have to search my memory boxes for the words I need, or perhaps, I must rethink my ideas because I don’t know the words, and must express my thoughts in some other, simpler way, but instead, I was in a place where everything I said was what I meant. My thoughts were raw and out there for the world to know, because they could. They could understand me, but worse still, I could understand them.

If Albania has taught me anything, it is to not listen to the thoughts of others. In the beginning, it took so much mindpower to understand what others were saying. Now, it takes willpower. It’s not that it would be particularly hard to understand, it’s that I spent so long being so tired from trying to understand. After a while, I started to wonder why I was trying. No one is ever talking about me. In fact, I would argue that people here talk about me much much more than people back in the US, but still, people are never talking about me. Even if they are talking about me, my life is not somehow better for knowing what is being said. So why do I feel the need to listen? So I stopped trying. I have no idea when it happened. Probably it was something that just happened over time, but it is incredibly freeing. So in Athens, I was completely overwhelmed with the ability to just know. It’s not that people were talking about me, as we all know that people care about us much less than we think, but what they were talking about, the words of these Americans on vacation in one of the most beautiful, most historical cities, were entirely disappointing. The negativity was excessive, and my time in Athens was negatively impacted simply because I knew of its existence. The willpower it takes to ignore when I don’t have to think to understand is so great that I am almost scared to come home in 2 years.

This really was my first experience with reverse culture shock. It was not earth shattering by any means, but it did solidify many of the lessons that I have learned and life adaptions that I have made while living here in Albania.

I miss many things about my home in Kansas, the way of life, the possibilities. When asked about missing home, I am blunt. I tell people that I miss my family and friends, but that I don't miss much else about the place itself. While I miss the possibility, and the mindset of always working hard, I don't miss the competition, the unbalanced priorities, and the negativity that this mindset breeds. As I sit here writing this, I really don't know if it is possible to have it all, and I really don't think that is the point. What I do think is that I will forever walk through life with the Albanians I love the most in the back of my mind telling me "No problem" or "Mos u mërzit" when my American want for perfection in everything I do gets to me.

When I got home from Athens, my first request was to go visit my favorite dog, Rosa. Upon rounding the bend near her house, it was clear something was wrong. There was no dog bounding towards the sound of our voices, instead, just an empty road. Rosa's mom met us on the drive and said that Rosa had been stolen while I was away. While Niku chatted with her, I sat and stared and refused to listen, to understand. So when we turned to leave, I broke down. We got back to Niku's house for dinner, and he told me to wait. He showed up 3 minutes later looking like this.