We have just landed back home in Amman after two months in the US for the summer. I thought I’d share some thoughts and reflections on the time away and our return.
Not new anymore!
It is really great to not be a new teacher in a school anymore. It’s such a steep learning curve, and in some ways, I was racing towards summer so that I could cross that threshold. Even a person like me, who likes change and has actively pursued a life of new challenges, still sometimes questions why I put myself through being new!
When we landed yesterday, it was so nice to know where we were going, to find our clothes in the closets, our stuff in the kitchen. We didn’t need to figure out where the grocery store was, or where to buy drinking glasses. We just got to walk in the door.
Interestingly, Matilda said this morning that she missed spending that first week here with the other newbies, zooming around IKEA and sitting at long tables at restaurants. I get what she’s saying, but she just got to ride along and make new friends. I think I would much rather have been a passenger like Matilda was last year, than the metaphorical bus driver that I was.
When we walked into our apartment yesterday evening, it was a bit uncanny. A bit like an Airbnb you have stayed in before. But it’s our house! I couldn’t remember where we kept the big mixing bowls or the measuring cups! It’s amazing what 8 weeks away will do! On the other hand, it’s nice to open a cabinet and see exactly the stuff you want! My favorite knives! A high quality rubber spatula. Man, these Airbnb owners have all the stuff I like 😛
All of the kids were excited to return. It was nice to see them smiling and happy to be home.
The Smell of Water
The day after we landed in Minnesota in early June, I went to the grocery store. It had rained the day before and as I got out of the car, I was hit by it: the smell of water. I felt like I had unlocked a whole new sense, like those scenes in movies when a character unlocks magical powers. The camera on me would have been doing that simultaneous zoom out/zoom in thing. I could smell the wet topsoil all around me. What a smell! I could have rolled in the grass like a dog.
Spending 9 months in a rocky desert will give you a real appreciation for the smell of water–especially in the land of 10,000 lakes! I kept wanting to tell someone at the Cub Foods: did you guys know they just have tons of water in this place, just sitting around?! (Side note: only Minnesotans would round down from 11,842 actual lakes in their motto. It’s actually more than 14,000 if you count lakes shared along the US-Canada border!)
Jordan has given me a new appreciation and awareness of water. What a gift, water. I have a bad feeling that over the next few decades, more people will come to this awareness with climate change.
Bidets!
I am so glad to be back in the land of bidets. Even public bathrooms in Jordan mostly have bidet hoses next to the toilet. Look I took a picture a year ago:
Listen, you can clutch your pearls all you want about bidets, but once you use one, you will get it.
It’s Not the Heat…
…it’s the humidity. This stupid cliche is so true. We landed and it was 38C/100F. That’s hotter than it was in Minnesota, but it didn’t feel as hot. The dry heat really does feel different. When Minnesota summers are at their best, it’s in the 70s F (20s C) and it’s amazing. But we had some really humid, sweltering days.
But, in Minnesota we have town pools and water parks. Very nice. I will miss those.
Jet Lag
Holy crap, jet lag. I was so exhausted yesterday evening after we arrived, I fell asleep hard, but then woke up at 1 am. My body was like, that was a great nap. Now, when’s dinner? I fell back to sleep around 5 am and slept until 10 am. Everett woke up at 5 am, and Matilda had the magic and slept from 9 pm to 10 am. It’s gonna be a mess for a few days. When I’m tired and jet lagged, I get this feeling of being insubstantial, like I’m filled with air or fluff. There’s not stuff in me. I hate that feeling.
Today, the day after landing, I am already feeling better. I made a note to remember that on the second day of jet lag you get a fake out feeling of being back on track and then you relapse to one more bad night of sleep. So tonight should be great and tomorrow night will suck.
(Somewhat related: on the flight from Jordan to the US, there was a guy next to me (in his 20s or 30s) who put on a neck pillow on and slept the entire 12 hour flight. He didn’t eat either meal that was served, watched no movies. Just freaking shut down. I was shocked. On the flight back to Jordan, new guy, same thing! He put his neck pillow on and powered down. He did get up twice for the bathroom, but otherwise, no meals, just sleeping. What is this voodoo?! Did they just get super sleep deprived? All respect to these two men.
The Home Alone Airport Sprint
On our trip to the US in June, we had to sprint to make our connection. In Dallas, when we arrived, it took more than an hour for our bags to come out and we then had to recheck them (international flights, you have to collect luggage, go through customs, then recheck). We raced through the airport and just barely made our Minneapolis connection. Poor Everett was so exhausted after a night on the plane, but he was able to run.
Then, on our flight back, our Minneapolis to Chicago leg was delayed, so we had to run through the Chicago airport to make our flight to Amman. I hate O’Hare. You have to take a bus along the runways to get from terminal 3 to 5, and you have to go through weird security protocols. Then, Terminal 5, once you get there, is craaaazy long. I think we had to run a kilometer. My watched clocked me at 20 minutes of high heart rate during that ordeal. Poor Everett, yet again. He and I ran at the back while David and the bigger kids raced to the gate. There were gate agents waving us along the terminal, asking if we were part of the family of 5 going to Jordan. Geez, they must have been paging us to board. We made it, but Everett was nearly in tears. Our luggage, on the other hand, did not make it on to the Jordan flight (see my previous hatred of Chicago O’Hare). Our bags landed in Jordan today, and they will get delivered at some point, hopefully soon.
Luckily, we are in our own house, and we have clothes and stocked bathrooms waiting for us. But everyone is excited to unpack their US treasures. We brought tons of books, so I’m excited to get those up on the shelves.
The Elephant in the Room
Yes, we flew into the Middle East yesterday. Yes, all the crap is still going on. (Too soon to write “Yes, we are still in another forever war”?) If you’re curious, our plane coming here was full. I did notice that before we took off, the pilot listed all of the countries whose airspace we would fly through. He gave us a very detailed flight path: Slovenia, Bosnia, Cyprus… Did they do that last year? I don’t remember. I wonder if this was a way to reassure us of our safety.
Everyone who lives in the Middle East will have their own idiosyncratic response to what’s going on right now. (And many who don’t live here have opinions on how we should feel.) I’m not saying my way is the right way, but I wasn’t worried. I am not worried, present tense. Amman looks and feels and sounds pretty normal. No air raid sirens since we landed, and let’s hope that continues. (I was comforted to hear the Call to Prayer yesterday evening. Calvin told me at one point in Minnesota this summer that he heard a phantom Call to Prayer–there was a random sound outside and his brain interpreted it as the Call to Prayer.)
I have a lot of complex, simultaneous, and rotating emotions and thoughts. I won’t go into all of it right now. Fear doesn’t feature prominently, but frustration and anger do.
It feels good to be home. I have a teacher leadership retreat tomorrow (Monday) and David and I start full faculty PD/pre service on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to returning as a twobie (not a newbie!) and seeing friends and colleagues.
I’m not the kind of person who finds living in the moment super easy or natural. My mind is working all the time, and I am too much of a storyteller to stay out of the future. But my plan for the year is to just put one foot in front of the other each day. There’s a great quote from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door: “We don’t have to know everything at once. We just do one thing at a time, as it is given us to do.” I really love that quote.
Anne Lamott wrote something in Bird by Bird with a similar sentiment:
“E.L. Doctorow once said that ‘writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.”
Happy New (School) Year to all who celebrate.
