I know this stage. This is the part of study abroad where you’ve been there long enough to have everything feel normal and ordinary. But things aren’t normal and ordinary. We’ve been here for less than two months. The normalcy is deceptive—it sets up the expectation for ease and mastery, when really, ease and mastery are still a long way off. Most things are still kind of hard. We’re still very much on the “first time around” cycle of learning.
So, as a result, this is the stage of extreme highs and lows. This is when the smallest failures can drive you to tears and tiniest successes can make you feel like you own the world.
Eli had a massive meltdown two nights ago when he was doing his math homework. His class is working on long division with decimals. And, true to stereotype, a lot of learning here is done by rote. There’s no conceptual math, but instead, just problem after problem after problem to solve. Practice, practice, practice. His math homework is tedious and long, and he is not a fan. I will interject to say that it’s working. He is getting ridiculously fast at division. But the other night, he copied a problem wrong and ended up having to erase a small bit of work. And that did it. A flood of tears and cries of homesickness.
So we listened. And soothed. But mostly, the only way through it is through it. I have found myself telling Eli many times that his sadness is not unexpected. We knew that this experience would be hard, for all of us. But we decided to do it anyway, and we’d make that same decision again. Even the worst days are still better than not coming at all. Eli likes to hear me say this. It’s comforting, I think, to know that your sadness is completely normal.
But, here comes the high. Back on the horse today. He arrived home from school with three friends in tow—two boys and a girl. A quick hello and off they went to the park to play baseball and tag and “monkey in the middle.” Eli was gone for less than an hour, but upon return, bounded into the house announcing, “This was the most awesomest day ever!” He felt included and liked and he was absolutely brimming with confidence. This feeling carried over into the evening, and math homework caused not the slightest problem tonight.
Mikki has had her own lows, too. I will say that she is already a kid of highs and lows, so it’s actually harder to ascribe her mood swings solely to cultural adjustment. But here, she has more mood swings, and with more intense emotions. She’s had moments of absolute misery and frustration—when she lost a game of “rock, scissor, paper” or couldn’t find her favorite pen. But also unlike at home, she turns around from her low moods exceptionally quickly. Smiles come only a few minutes after tears.
But she, too, had a great day today. A friend came ringing our bell after school, and Mikki scooted off to a playdate. And this week, she has found her element here. We got her a craft book and have watched her dive into it in full force. Every disposable chopstick, empty box and piece of scrap paper we have has been rescued from our recycle bin, and Mikki has created puppet after creature after toy. She’s happiest when she’s creating, and I’ve spent the week watching her happily engage herself after school.
I, too, am hardly immune to these ups and downs. The other day, I was in tears, TEARS I tell you, when I couldn’t find ginger at the grocery store. (It’s not next to the garlic, folks!) It wasn’t even the frustration of not being able to find a simple ingredient that got me. It was the fact that I tried to be brave. I know the word for ginger, and I actually got courageous and asked a store clerk for help finding it. But my Japanese is at the level where I can handle conversations only when they go in a predictable pattern. “Yes, let me show you!” or “Right there on the left!” are phrases that I can stomp all over. It’s when the conversation takes an unexpected turn: “We should have more in next week” or “Would you consider using a different aromatic instead?” that I can’t handle. And of course, I’m guessing on those last two comments because I have NO idea what the woman said to me. But whatever it was, my response was completely wrong and invalid. Her reaction showed confusion and, I swear, borderline pain. And then someone else tried to help, and the whole exchange got even worse. And I was embarrassed and frustrated, and I really just wanted to go home and put the chicken in to marinade. So I went home and cried instead.
What’s interesting for me about the process of language learning here is that I’ve BEEN there. I've had about a million “can’t-understand-the-grocery-store-woman” experiences before, only they were in China at a time when I was hell bent on learning Chinese. I carried around a little notebook to jot down phrases. If I heard a new word, I would run home to look it up. I listened to the radio not because I was interested in the program but because I wanted to practice listening. I took countless cabs to nowhere-in-particular simply because I discovered early on that cabbies were a great way to practice chatting. I know what this process is like. And I can honestly say that I have no interest in doing it again. I just don’t. It’s not that I’m jaded or tapped out or no longer interested in learning in general. I love learning. I’m just not interested in learning a language. I want to read books and visit museums. And then I want to go home and put the chicken in to marinade.
But lows to highs, on the flip side, here’s what I’m absolutely loving about this experience:
Riding my bike to the grocery store. Bike riding is old-school here. No fancy mountain bikes with a million gears. Just old-fashioned street bikes. No gears. No helmets. A big basket up front for carrying home groceries. I usually shop at the local supermarket, but on the way there, I’m sometimes tempted by a great little shotengai (shopping street). There’s a meat market next to a flower shop next to a small hardware store—shop after shop. And, the best part is that the street actually has speakers with cheerful music playing all day long. So when you bike down it, you actually feel like you’re in a movie. SCENE: The background music enraptures the audience as they watch the leading lady happily riding her bike to the local market to pick up that day’s fresh vegetables which she will feed to her loving family. (Of course, nothing she cooks will be flavored with ginger, but I digress…).
The way people look at my children on the train. With utter fascination and delight, since foreign children (well, let’s be honest….WHITE foreign children) are a rarity here. But racial privilege aside (another blog post on that to come soon), people are really kind to my family and excited by my children. Any mom would be proud.
Cleanliness. Clean cars, clean streets, clean trains, clean parks, clean signs. Every once in a while, you might pass a cigarette butt or some random trash. But it’s rare. There is a wonderful sense of civic responsibility here. People pick up after themselves. And public spaces tend to be immaculate. It’s inspiring.
The looseness of our schedule. I’m telecommuting from the US. Everyone with whom I collaborate is available early in the morning or late at night. So that’s usually when I end up working. And that leaves my middays delightfully free. I read. I walk. I cook. I have lunch with Jeremy.
And tourism. The tourism deserves a mention. The real high is that on the weekend, we forget about all of that immersion stuff and we play the part of tourists. Our weekends are jam-packed with discovery. There is simply an incredible number of things to see and do. Temples, gardens, shrines, a science museum, a monkey park (monkeys were free-roaming…no cages!), great restaurants, cool shops, hikes…it just doesn’t stop. And the best part is that it’s just us. No playdates, no sleepovers, no school events. It’s just family time. Please don’t get me wrong—we have a very full life in Michigan and I love the community event-filled weekends, too. But it’s really nice to get a break from it. The kids have loved it, too. They are interested and eager, and troopers about long days of tourism. We come home exhausted on Saturday and Sunday nights. Granted, I will admit that Sunday night usually brings its share of meltdowns—really, back to school again? But they recover, the lows turn into highs, and it’s worth it in spades.
