Sweet Home...Illinois

Whoa - I completed!

Tomorrow it will be three weeks since I have been home in the USA. Staggering to think that a year and a half is over, a new year has dawned, and the next chapter in my life is underway...

Enough of the gross cliches, though in all honesty I am floored by the fact that the program is over already and I am back in my parents' house, making family dinner every night and tripping over the family's 19-year-old, deaf cat. This is going to sound like the ramblings of an old lady, but it seems that time is moving faster than ever - is this just one of the symptoms of getting older/growing up?

Christmas this year was so nice! I enjoy my parents' house, but this year everything felt so warm and cuddly - flannel pyjamas, fireplace, proper tree, presents I got to open and keep instead of sending back in the suitcase with Mom and Dad. I hope everyone else had pleasant holidays.

What has been most interesting about returning to the US after 16 months is the reverse culture shock. It's not debilitating, but over and over again I find myself feeling just a little muddled or amazed, much to the amusement of whichever present friend or family member. For example:

Portions are huge. Like, I have a stomach ache every time I eat anything, because portions are unbelievable. When I've eaten out with my family, plate sizes are out of control. Walking into a gas station convenience store for the first time, I walked up and down every aisle marveling at the array of snack options, then stood in front of the sodas and waters shouting at my mother, "But everything is so BIG!"

Everyone speaks English here. Like, English that I can understand, with slang that I understand. I have now picked up so many new British slang words and weird verbal pauses and foreigner's syntax that I now sound like the weird one.

Food tastes funny. I'm nearly over it now, but I swear I can taste the artificial sweetners, preservatives, flavors, and chemicals. It's in chocolate. Canned vegetables. Cheese. Taco Bell. I can't explain - it just tastes funny.

Byebye, Thailand

It takes FOREVER to get anywhere. I live in a subdivision a mile from the interstate and five miles from the nearest town (population: 5,000). There are no bike lanes. No public transportation options. No people on the street. No traffic noise, or neighbor noise, or any kind of noise, for that matter. It's both calming and eerie.

Where are all the people? I have so much space here, it confuses me. And all the comforts of the modern world, right at my fingertips. After I unpacked, I realized I have more clothing options, three sets of tweezers, more than two towels, a pile of DVDs that would take a week to watch.


I get excited because all the channels on TV are in English! Tragically, there is still nothing to watch!


Everything is so dang expensive! I spent $15 on a diet coke and a salad in the Chicago suburbs! I keep calculating things in my head: if I was eating out in Bangkok, it would be $5. If I was getting a manicure in Ko Samui, it would be $5. If I was getting a beer at the Family Mart outside my old apartment building, it would be $1.50. Ridiculous.

No more of these things outside shopping malls.

When doing activities with my friends and family, I continually imagine what I would be doing if in London or Bangkok, and although I am enjoying my US-based activities, I miss being abroad. New Year's US: dancing with the girls at a "classy" northern Illinois restaurant/party hall. New Year's London: drinking champagne on the street at Trafalgar Square with newly-met friends on the street. Saturday night US: drinking a beer with friends in a terrifying townie bar that poses as upscale. Saturday night Bangkok: jumping up and down to LMFAO at the RCA club, while the Europeans drank outside and the Thais sipped their drinks and stared at the idiot Americans making fools of themselves dancing. It's all relative, I suppose.

Driving, surprisingly, has been easy to adjust to, and although I still get confused what side of the road the oncoming traffic is coming from, I have not yet turned onto the wrong side of the road. I am, however, frustrated with the fact that I have to drive and can't hop on public transport and open a book.

And lastly, everyone laughs when I say it's cold, because it's been unseasonably warm for an Illinois winter. I came home with a tan - that's gone now. During after Christmas shopping, I keep going for the summer clothes because I'm so trained to, showing them to my mother with my teeth chattering. 


How is it that I often felt so American when abroad, but as soon as I get back to my country of origin, I feel like such an outsider? I had to have my friends explain the Kardashian saga to me yesterday, and all I could think about was how much more interesting the political and economic drama in Bangkok and the EU were. What has happened to me?!?

(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life

I spent this week in Cambodia with friends, and as we trekked the jungle and ate sticky rice with our fingers and climbed to the top of the wats at Angkor, all I could think about was how I didn’t want all of this to end. Angkor was the last trip I will be taking with my friends in this program and as a graduate student, and I whined like a child when we got to the airport to go back to Bangkok.

Maybe it’s the lack of proper sleep or the episode of Glee I just watched, but I have been feeling very nostalgic for this past year and a half. In two weeks this program will have completed, my bags will be packed and I will step onto the threshold of my parents’ house for Christmas, thus ending this chapter of my life and turning the proverbial page to the next. And although I am stupid-excited for Christmas (I downloaded my two favorite secular Christmas songs, “All I Want for Christmas” and “Last Christmas,” and have been singing them as loudly as possible), there is a bit of nervous anticipation surrounding the holiday.

The fact is that I’m suffering from a bit of Peter Pan syndrome: I associate the completion of my program and degree with growing up, and suddenly I realize I’m not ready for it yet. Now, I know when my parents were my age they were engaged, and many of my friends have homes and jobs and partners and lives, but that level of adulthood scares me. Part of the reason I entered this program was to take a gap year, to complete my education and to have some time abroad to re-evaluate my life situation, but somewhere that last piece of the puzzle was abandoned, and here I am, twenty-five years old, still trembling with the thought of taking a job for more than a year, unsure where I want my life to go.

I suppose that in hindsight, I anticipated to have fun during my year and a half, but never did I anticipate I would have this much fun, nor did I anticipate on learning as much as I have. The only problem is that expanding my mind this far has truly given me limitless possibilities in the way that they only talk about at high school and university graduations. There has been so much discovery, so much love, so many good conversations, endless evenings, and pints of beer, but there is still so much out there.  I am terrified that by choosing a career path and tackling my future that I will give up my past and many of those vagabond, limitless, self-discovering moments and opportunities.

I am just not ready for the real world. I suffer from extreme white girl problems.

Again, I think on all this past year and a half has taught me about. International relations. Religion. Freedom. Football (soccer) hooligans. Genocide. Geography. Culture, power and politics in the workplace. Belly dancing. Developing nations. Generosity. Love. Tyranny. Drinking. Architecture. Friendship. Commuting in the rain. Cooking. House and techno music. Walking in high heels. Hatred. Loneliness. How to speak up. Management and entrepreneurship. Innovation. The value of silence. Bravery. Desserts. The lessons go on and on.

Everything about this year has been such a blessing, and for the first time ever I’m nervous rather than excited about what the next step will bring. I don’t want to become a drone, nor do I actually want to become Peter Pan. Finding the divine balance in life is a tricky and rather arduous task. These days I am living in a Rent-esque “No Day But Today” - Avenue Q “What do You do with a B.A. in English?” haze. It’s as if my life is Jamie Cullum’s song “Twentysomething.”

But I suppose that for the moment - now that I have vented my white girl problems - my first step after getting home is to get back to all the wonderful relationships I neglected whilst tramping across the globe. What I always think while I’m at some place very cool is “I wish so-and-so could see this!” So, friends back in the USA, switch on (or off, as the case may be) your mobiles - you’re getting an eager call very soon...

I'm Going Slightly Mad

Just a few minutes ago I turned in the first final draft of my thesis, which is the culmination of my year and a half of graduate school and is something I therefore should have been working on since I started school. In reality, I started thinking about my thesis in April, started seriously working on it in September, and really actually understood what the heck I was supposed to do last Monday. The way my program runs is that classes ended in October, giving us 3/4 of November to work exclusively on the thesis. All of this resulted in me turning into the absolute definition of a tragic hot mess this past week, and naturally, instead of hiding the shameful truth of what I really did this past week, I’m sharing it publicly.

I suppose I should be happy that I’ve been glued to my Mac for the last week, alternating between Pages, Facebook, YouTube and a handful of pdf files - my dad told me about his thesis-writing days in the ’70’s, when he pulled all nighters for a month editing and transcribing his hand-written thesis onto an IBM Selectric typewriter. I shudder to think! A world where graduate students don’t have the internet and fancy word processing software is a dark place I never want to discover.

However, I also suppose some could argue that the world I inhabited this month was just as depraved. When my sleeping patterns became erratic, when my obsession with iced coffees bordered on addictive, and when the words “however” and “therefore” became more prevalent in my vocabulary than “awesome” and “let’s go have a drink and dance it out”, I realized I was descending into madness.

For those who have not taken their master’s degrees, just don’t do it. It’s a lot of student loans, and a lot of sitting in classrooms listening to eggheads wax poetic. Although I’ve loved this year and a half of my life, I could argue that - loans and classes aside - the beast you become for the weeks leading up to the completion of your thesis is not something you want to experience. For example, the month of November found me doing the following:

• Eating powdered iced tea out of a sachet at one in the morning. I used to think my students were disgusting for eating powdered Kool-Aid. Now I understand.
• Spilling Thai grape Kool-Aid in my bed at midnight. I had to sleep in damp, purple sheets.
• Watching so much Summerland on Asian TV that I actually became invested in the storyline and characters.
• Watching out my window for the iced coffee cart to come downstairs so I could substitute caffeine for a meal.
• Downloading “Last Christmas” by Wham! and “It’s Christmas” by Buckcherry - yeah, I paid for those. And subsequently put them on perpetual repeat.
• Watching more YouTube than humanly possible - I don’t even want to admit what I’ve watched. I’ve also shopped online at Sephora, read a lot of the blog Thought Catalog,  laughed at hipster Harry Potter comics, and learned what PedoBear is.
• Not showering because…why shower? And when I do shower, it’s not because I feel dirty, it’s to procrastinate.
• Staring at the bags under my eyes because despite the fact that it’s 3am and I’m exhausted, doing that is still better than writing.
• Getting excited about Titanic 3D, which comes out in April. My heart has been going on for twelve years waiting for this moment.
• Entertaining the idea of a Twilight movie marathon with two of my girlfriends here, only to find out that no one has the movies (because they suck).
• Breaking into giggle fits in the middle of the university’s computer lab.

Looking back at this list, all I can think is: Girl, you are tragic! The worst part is, when these situations were occurring, at no point did I ever feel weird or ashamed of my behavior.

The weird thing is that I’m not even excited about turning in my thesis, because I know I’ll get back from the holiday I’m about to leave for to a plethora of comments and edits from my adviser. What’s more, I’m defending this piece of crap on the 12th, and I’m already nervous!

Although I can’t seem to win, I still comfort myself with the fact that I’m probably not the only one who has turned into such a monster during her thesis-writing - I’m just one of the few who has told the truth about it. My reward for completing my thesis is a four-day trip to Cambodia, which I’m leaving for in about an hour. It is a well-needed trip, and a good reminder that, as I only have three weeks left before this crazy journey ends, I better make the most of it. So no more re-watching the Inbetweeners series for the fifth time - it’s time to re-take my life back and have a little fun!!!

Rome in Pictures

Not that I'm trying to spark jealousy in anyone, but this time last year I was enjoying a post-Thanksgiving holiday in Rome, Italy. During my four days I drank red wine with Brazilians, rode around town in a Fiat with local university students, ate a lot of pizza and gelatto, and stood underneath the walls of the Colosseum to get out of the rain. The city is a mad mix of speeding cars, posh shopping, rich Roman history and Mediterranean climate. But instead of describing the trip in words, I thought it would be more interesting to post some pictures...

Palm tree in a neighborhood

Oh hey, Colosseum

Trevi Fountain by night

Raphael? Or Michalangelo?

From the top of the Spanish Steps

The Pantheon from above

Sidewalk mosaics in the Pantheon

The inside of the Colosseum

Rome

One of the many halls the inside of the Vatican

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

Victor Emmanuel Monument

Malaysia, Truly Asia

The Patronus Towers by night

The language is so bizarre: it uses the English alphabet, but the words are such a jumble of letters you could never decipher it (unless you spoke it, of course). To hear a person speak it, the language didn’t sound particularly Asian, nor did it sound European - it was all its own.

The fusion of cultures is also apparent in Malay food. The majority of our mini-break revolved around our next meal, which our hostel manager told us is just how the Malaysians travel! It’s not a bad way to be. One day we ferried out to Crab Island outside of town, which is totally built on stilts and where we had some delicious prawns and crab. We sampled local Indian food at a volunteer pay-as-you-feel restaurant, and of course ate the traditional Moroccan for Thanksgiving.

Most of our time consisted of walking across town looking at colorful temples, riding scooters and trains, and eating food. The temples were particularly amazing - the Batu Caves are cut into the side of a cliff face outside of town, and inside have been turned into colorful Hindu temples. It was there we also saw the most adorable little monkeys - my friend even gave one his liter water bottle, which the monkey drank from just like a human!

Crab Island

Of course, a trip to KL wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Patronus Towers, one of the highlights of southeast Asian architecture. They are surprisingly average by day (the sky is often too hazy), but by night they are spectacular. The towers seem to glow in the night sky. They are really awe-inspiring and topped off a great visit.

For some reason, our Thai visas require us to leave the country within the first 90 days of our stay - so because I am terrified of ending up in Thai prison, three friends and I complied with the law and spent three days this week in Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia. We were also celebrating the submission of the first drafts of our theses.

Yummm...crabs on Crab Island

KL, as it is called by locals, is a really interesting blend of culture and heritage, and I found the religious diversity also fascinating. The population is heavily Muslim, but there are few Arabs. In addition to the majority local Malay population, there are a large contingent of Indians (a mix of Muslim, Hindu and Christian) and Chinese (Buddhist and Taoist).

Awww...thirsty monkey!

A family praying with a monk

Hindu temple in the Batu Caves

Depictions of Hindu gods in the Batu Caves