Resistance

Resistance: A word that sums up some of our feelings upon setting up life again in the United States. Unique questions have come to the surface. Do we really need to have cell phones again? Can we get by with just one car instead of two? Do we have to return to our storage unit and retrieve all our stuff? What could we possibly need that we’ve done so easily without all year?

Travis and I have been home now for a couple of weeks and there is much to be said about “reverse culture shock.” Being back in a place so familiar, I stand aghast at some of the things I took for granted before without giving it a second thought. For example, I know my way around the city without using a map. When I want to buy something, I know what store to find it in. I can ask someone for help in my native language and understand the response. When I look at the headlines on a newspaper, I can read them. Road signs carry meaning; I don’t need to guess at how an unfamiliar symbol might be interpreted. Although these things may seem so simple, they clearly illustrate some of the difficulties we encountered when living abroad. But, do we really miss these difficulties now that we’re on our way to becoming settled? That answer is still up for grabs.

Starting up again from scratch in our American lives requires quite a few steps. I’m finding this transitional month of August ’09 to be very reminiscent of August ’08 when we were preparing for our new transient lifestyle abroad. Only this time, instead of closing off accounts and packing things away, we’re slowly opening up boxes and deciding where to lay new roots. With our experiences of this year fresh in our minds, we have hopes to do things a little alternatively as we become established.

Step 1: The cell phone. Even though cell phones were abundantly present in every country we visited this year, Travis and I both fear being tied to our ringing machines again. You can’t believe how nice it was having no phone bill to pay. We wondered how long we could go without signing up for a contract. This was maybe a fun experiment for us, but our family members trying to get a hold of us didn’t find this all too convenient. The truth is, we lasted two weeks before heading to the Verizon store, two weeks that included having to borrow my mom’s cell phone several times and even finding ourselves stuck at a phone booth digging in our pockets for change. Who knew that payphones were 75 cents for a local call!

So with much research, we’ve signed up for one pay-as-you-go plan that doesn’t feel as committal to us as the usual 2-yr. agreement with strings attached. Because Travis still had his old cell phone, we were thrilled to put no money down and still acquire a new number. It may be very out of date compared to the iPhones and BlackBerrys out there, but it will do. We are still living a bit out of the norm being that we only have one phone between us, but I guess at this point we’re so used to being together at every moment, the thought of actually having times apart when we need to get a hold of each other sounds rather foreign to us.

Step 2: A vehicle. I have not been behind a steering wheel for 11 months and haven’t missed driving for even a moment. We were amazed this year at how far your own two feet can take you when you want to go somewhere. Add to that the ease and convenience of public transportation in so many of the countries we visited, driving was a non-issue. Travis and I arrived in Los Angeles inspired to master the bus and metro system here and hold off on buying a car. But, did you know that just to go 30 miles from Chino to Pasadena would cost us about $20? Maybe this amount is what we should have expected, but when accustomed to parts of Europe where you can travel to another country for that price, we just couldn’t do it. Isn’t the idea of public transportation to motivate people to save money on gas and use their cars less often? With that price, maybe that’s why so many people are still on the freeways? So again, our aspirations were shot down after just two weeks of trying to go from point A to B in these spread out, metropolitan suburbs. When we found ourselves having to bum rides from our moms and my 17 yr. old sister, the feeling of being “kids without wheels” again was just all too frightening.

So, we are now going to and fro (mostly back and forth to our guestrooms with our families in Chino and Pasadena) in our new, used Honda CRV. It’s a good solid vehicle and we are pleased as punch with it. I have yet to want to drive as I’ve preferred this year of less responsibility, but I did enjoy the 5 minutes I drove it the day we made our purchase. It’s interesting that the moment you are mobile again, the ideas you had in your head about distances completely change. A 1 to 2 mile walk to the grocery store was commonplace to us abroad, but here in California we’d feel pretty strange lugging our shopping bags down the city streets for this distance. We’ve even noticed how the sidewalks here appear so empty compared to the hustle and bustle of pedestrian and bicycle traffic we’re used to. It’s a little sad really, we now find ourselves planning walks as workout times rather than just depending on our typical day of walking around to cover our daily exercise needs. Our next goal is to see how long we can go with having just one car. The hope is that one of us can find work that is bikeable from our next home-to-be. I guess time will tell. That leads me to the next step…

Step 3: Reclaiming some possessions. Take a guess on the one thing we wanted to retrieve from our storage unit right away upon returning. Yes, our bicycles. Driving up to the garage in Pomona, we were flooded with memories of the last time we were there one year ago, locking up all of our possessions for who knows how long. At that point I remember thinking, “Can I really live on just the things in this suitcase for a whole year?” Well, mission accomplished. With happy visions of riding our bikes again, we walked up the stairs with the August heat beating on us just as vibrantly as the day we moved everything in. To our dismay, our unit key broke in half when Travis put it in the lock, making it impossible to open. Because it was after office hours, we were forced to leave our bikes behind and find a way to solve this problem. Knowing all of our stuff was just on the other side of that door, impossible to retrieve, was a strange feeling. I couldn’t help but wonder, “What kind of lesson is this teaching me as to the value and need of our material possessions? Now that they’re within our grasp, how much do we really need these things in life we didn’t depend on while we were away?” Something to ponder…

In conclusion, Travis was able to bust open the lock the following day and we are now back on our own wheels riding familiar paths of our past. Our transient lifestyle is turning more towards permanence each day even though we are slightly resistant, but we are still living out of suitcases for the time being. Many thanks to our families for having open rooms for us as well as such welcoming environments. I don’t think we realized how much we missed our family members until we returned. It’s been so much fun to reunite, share some stories and hear about what we missed. Oh yeah, and jobs? That should probably be one of the steps included in this blog. We don’t quite have them yet, but no worries… resumes are out there and we’ll keep you posted.