Re-Entry

Ahoj všem,

This is a hard post for me to write, and I’ve been putting it off.

Lots of things have happened since my last blog post, culminating in my arrival in the US two weeks ago.

It started in February when I was snowboarding in Slovakia, after which my leg started hurting. I thought I had pulled something, but nothing more than that. I rubbed some creams and tried some special Czech waters and alcohols, but it was still hurting after a month, so I went to the doctor. He thought it could be something stretched or pulled as well, so I started using crutches and thought I would be okay, but it kept getting worse and worse.

As most of you reading this probably know, I’ve had juvenile arthritis since I was 4, which has been in remission for a number of years. Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t think it was arthritis sooner. I think I was hoping that if I didn’t say it was, it couldn’t be.

By April, I couldn’t walk anymore — my knees were constantly huge with swelling; my feet, back, and even wrists were painful. I needed to find a specialist. As it turns out, there’s 3 juvenile rheumatologists in the Czech Republic, and my host mom, bless her, helped me schedule an appointment with one in Prague.

The doctor confirmed that I was in a flare of arthritis. It put a knife in me to hear.

It was incredibly hard and to go through. I felt bad for putting so much burden on my host family, and was trying to act like I wasn’t scared or afraid of my disease. None of the doctors I saw could speak English, which added yet another layer of difficulty. I had been using a Czech word that I thought meant arthritis, but meant something different. But either way, my host parents hadn’t ever heard that kids could have arthritis — only I understood what was going on, and I only did halfway. I felt lost.

After the appointment in Prague, I called my parents and told them I needed to come home. I had tried for months to pretend that I could make it through the rest of the year, but it was really over. As much as it broke my heart, it was the right thing to do — it would be impossible to enjoy the last few months in my current state; any kind of sightseeing or trips would have been unthinkable, when I could hardly get to the kitchen from my bedroom.

 

The same day, I called my first host mom to tell her that I would be leaving the next week. The next morning, she picked me up in her car and drove me around the Czech countryside to look at castles and take pictures from the car. We did that all week — every day we would roadtrip around the region sightseeing. I’m so grateful for the time I spent with her in the last week — truly some of the best moments.

 

Then, just like that, I was leaving. My host mom braided my hair one last time the night before, and then woke up at 2am to make me kaše so I wouldn’t be hungry. When I hugged her tight she told me with tears in her eyes, “jsi úžasná holka. Takovou bych chtěla.” I told her, “už máš.” It was a beautiful moment. I realized how close I had grown to and how dear my host mom had become to me, and it made me tear up too, realizing how much I would miss her.

My first host mom took me to the airport in Prague. On the way, I was still asking her so many questions about things I felt like I still had to learn about the Czech Republic and its people. “What’s the best kind of mushroom to pick? How do you make yogurt? What’s the name of that one plant?”

Finally, we showed up at the airport. She waited with me as long as she could, until the steward came with the wheelchair to take me. We decided that we wouldn’t say “goodbye,” but just, “see you later.” I had promised I would come back — I have so many reasons to come (one of the Rotarians had even given me a key to a chapel somewhere in the Bohemian woods — if that isn’t a hook, I don’t know what is), so many things left to see and learn, and so many people to visit. I watched her as the man wheeled me away, until she got lost in the crowd — it was a strange parallel to watching my parents walk away all those months ago in Chicago.

I wrote some disorganized thoughts in a notebook as I waited for my plane, still trying desperately to process the fact that I was leaving this country — trying making sense of what I had experienced, and what it really meant to be “Czech” or “American.” I still felt like I had so many questions unanswered, and so many things I hadn’t yet learned. I had hoped it would give me closure to write down what I thought, but it didn’t. Then I thought maybe this blog post would give me closure.

But the more that I think, I’m not looking for closure. As much as I know that this year was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I don’t think it needs to be something that has an opening and a closure; I choose to look at it as something that’s a larger part of me.

The biggest thing that I hadn’t expected throughout this whole journey is that I was still me the whole time. I didn’t feel magically different the second I stepped into a new country, and I didn’t feel magically foreign when I came back to my native. The whole thing was, in a word, gradual.

 

 

My time in Czech feels very much like a dream that I had. I was prepared that everything at home would be different than when I left but, honestly, it feels exactly the same. Sure, I’m in a different emotional place than my friends, and I can see that my perspective has changed on a lot of things. Nonetheless, I have an overwhelming feeling that my timeline stopped where it was, I lived a year in a parallel universe, and then I came back and my original timeline resumed. I still remember which light switch goes to which light, where I put those socks, how to get to WalMart, … I don’t stumble trying to speak English, and I don’t feel like I understand American culture any less than I did before.

I was kind of disappointed in myself for this, because I read something that told me that the less culture shock I felt coming back, the less I had successfully connected with my culture abroad.

And I guess that could be true. I’m an independent person, who likes to do her own thing, which makes it harder to be deeply in a community sometimes. But I do feel like I formed strong bonds with the other exchange students, a few Czech friends, and definitely my host families. I was also very successful in the language. When I think back, I’m proud of how far I came in the year.

I started thinking about when I first arrived in Czechia — I hadn’t felt culture shock then either, and I can’t say I had a certain moment of cultural confusion. What happened simply made sense to me in the context that it happened. For some time I wondered if I had never experienced a different culture at all, if maybe Czech and American culture were just remarkably similar. But I’ve realized now that things are different, when I try to explain a Czech event using English — I don’t find the right words for what I mean, and the listener interprets things differently than they felt at the time, because they’re trying to judge Czech actions using American thoughts and words.

I’ve realized that there’s some seemingly-important words that exist in Czech, but that I never learned, because they were never relevant — words like passion, squirrel, and skyscraper. But there’s also many words in Czech that I can’t express precisely in English — hřibek, smůla, dobrou chuť. The lists don’t really cross over though — there’s no need to say “skyscraper” in a Czech setting, and it would be culturally strange to say something meaning “dobrou chuť” in the US.

It’s easier to talk about the Czech Republic in Czech, and the USA in English. Maybe that’s the ever-coveted bi-culturalism.

 

I still talk to my host families every few days. My last host mom has been sending me adorable texts like, “U vás svítí! Užij se!” (“The sun is shining in Pewaukee! Enjoy it!”) — she must look at the weather forecast for here. My first host mom has sent me pictures of beautiful places they’re seeing in Czech, and videos about how to make my favorite Czech foods. Last week I made my parents Czech roasted chicken with dumplings and cabbage. It wasn’t as good as when my host mom made it, but it wasn’t awful.

In terms of health — once I got home, I was able to make it to my regular doctor. She ordered me a few steroid joint injections, and since then, I’ve been able to walk on my own again. It makes me sad sometimes that I feel so much better than I did, that I couldn’t have stayed in Czech. But I’m still not well enough to have done everything I wanted to do in my last months. I’m grateful for the care of my doctors who have known me and my disease for a long time, and grateful to be with my parents.

 

 

I guess now’s the time when I should write something to put a bow on all this. I want to say that I’m extremely grateful to everyone who worked to provide me the opportunity for this experience — all the Rotarians I met, my host parents who became so dear to my heart, and everyone who supported me in taking this journey. I can see that I’ve grown a lot.

There were many, many moments in my exchange that weren’t perfect. I wouldn’t describe it as a perfect year, by any standard. But I’m grateful for the experience I had, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’m amazed at how much I learned about myself and the world. Most of the things I learned I couldn’t put into words, and didn’t even notice learning, but I’m surprising myself all the time.

This isn’t really closure; but it’s as close as I can — and as close as I want to — get.