I told you I wouldn’t be able to stay away for long. I am temporarily coming out of my blogging sabbatical in order to relate my latest adventures, this time right next to home.
It’s been two months since my return to the States and while I haven’t gone through much reverse culture shock, it is strange to be back. Sometimes I wake up and think I’m back in Chiang Mai and I often find myself comparing the people and places of Spokane with those of Thailand. Being home has a unique set of frustrations, even while it is providing me a chance to rest and process everything I’ve experienced. The holidays have been wonderful, although I may say they have also been a bit anticlimactic. It’s hard to explain. The holidays just aren’t the same when you’re away, but I think after looking forward to something for so long I didn’t really remember what to expect. I think part of it has to do with my state of transition. Things will feel a lot more “right” when I am more established, but for now I simply have to navigate a lot of difficult questions, both from others and myself.
That isn’t to say home isn’t everything I had hoped it would be. It has been great to see family again and reintegrate myself into their lives. I’ve also had a fantastic December what with many of my college friends coming to town to visit. I have had many enriching and encouraging conversations while visiting my favorite haunts in Spokane. There is no substitute for the friendship between individuals who know each other well. It is this fellowship that I have missed so acutely and experiencing it again is being home.
So life continues to be busy, even though I have much less on my to-do list. I have no leads on a job as of yet, but in the meantime I’ve been finding ways to volunteer or earn some spending money through babysitting (yes, really) and housesitting. Because my sister recently moved away, I am getting all of her old assignments which has been a big help. The family I am housesitting for again next month has two big dogs, two kittens, several outdoor cats, three horses, four cows and some chickens. It has actually been kind of therapeutic to be out in the country at their house and be around all these animals. I love the nature of the work and being outside. It’s just very “grounding” as one friend expressed it.
Now, the reason I’m writing this update and the source of its title is my latest odd job. Through a series of connections, I have been called upon to do some tutoring out at Eastern Washington University. I was told they have an ESL program that is booming and was expecting it to be (not unreasonably I think) a lot of Spanish speakers. But it’s not. It’s students from Saudi Arabia.
Apparently the Saudi government sponsors some of their students to come and study in the U.S. and, since it’s a great money-maker for the university, Eastern isn’t putting any limits on their program. How or why the tiny, rural town of Cheney Washington has been chosen as a study site for students from Saudi Arabia I have no idea. There certainly isn’t much to do and while I suppose it is quite the cultural exchange for them, I can’t see them integrating particularly well. Yet there it is.
My student is a 20-year-old Saudi guy who I am supposed to help with English conversation in the afternoons. He is very polite and works hard, but the job has ended up being more hassle than it’s worth because of the schedule and the fact that he is often late. Still, it has afforded some interesting opportunities to learn about his culture and to observe his reaction to American norms. He is curious about how I feel about Islam, whether or not I am married, and how much I paid for my car, among other things.
The car was really the tipping point for me deciding to blog about this little experience. After our first session, he followed me out of the library and I did my best to make small talk with him. We made our way to the parking lot where I assumed we would part ways. Instead he continued to follow me, somewhat hesitantly. When it became apparent that he was coming with me to my car I realized that he wanted me to give him a ride home. Now I know it sounds creepy as I write it, but I promise it was perfectly fine, just a bit awkward since I didn’t expect this to be part of the arrangement. Yet, being a sucker, I didn’t feel I could make him walk home in the cold (really, what was I going to say?) and so I offered him a lift.
This pattern continued the next couple of days, somewhat to my chagrin, but the tutoring arrangement is only temporary so I went along with it. However things took a turn for the ridiculous when he asked me to drop him off at Eastern’s central building. Surely this was close enough for him to walk? He kept trying to explain something to me and I couldn’t really understand what he was getting at until we pulled up to the PUB as it’s called and he flagged down two of his friends who proceeded to get into my car. Their English was quite a bit better and they thanked me profusely for giving them a ride back to their apartment, so I forgave them. But so it was that I found myself driving through Cheney Washington of all places with a carload of guys from Saudi Arabia.
Lately my student has not been asking for me to give him a ride home, which I am thankful for. I was surprised at him being okay with it in the first place. For one thing, men and women don’t approach each other at all in Saudi culture. It’s okay for me to work with a student of the opposite gender because neither of us “approached” each other, but outside of that I don’t imagine he is supposed to be spending time with me. Besides that, women aren’t even allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps it was the mere novelty of seeing a woman behind the wheel that was his motivation.
Anyways, the point is that I may have returned from my year abroad, but my life is definitely different from what it was before I left. One thing that hasn’t changed though is my ability to find myself in bizarre situations.
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