Bon Voyage

[Today’s entry is slightly shorter than the others, mainly because I didn’t write enough down on the actual day and now, three weeks later, I don’t remember squat, but also partially because I did less on this day. Took it easy after all the effort; relaxed in the afternoon, did some reading. In a way, what I’m doing in these first few weeks in France – reading and writing – is what I should’ve been doing all summer. Ah well, as one high school English teacher used to say, ‘Better late than dead’. The quotes that stick in our heads, eh? But my activity today, or lack thereof, should explain the format; most of this is thoughts I had at various points throughout the day.]

You know, it is a fight to go out – to go out again today, trying to get this paperwork done, encountering numerous obstacles. I have to will myself into doing it some more and not just staying in this room. Again, I’m sure there are countless exchange students, new missionaries, and others the world over who’ve been experiencing those feelings for decades. I can now relate to them firsthand, a skill that will certainly not remain unused throughout the rest of my life.

I went this morning to try again for my student card. Yes, I know they told me Friday, but that seems like a very long time from now, and if the disorganisation thus far is any indication, not everything they say is written in stone. Sure enough, this time the guy, though he laughed slightly when he saw me, told me jeudi, quatorze-heure. Thursday at 2 p.m. That’s tomorrow. Boom. Persistence.

Speaking of persistence, I also went to the international office to see if the woman had sent our papers back to Bradford that would release our funding. She hadn’t and asked me to come back tomorrow. I highly doubt she will have done it by tomorrow, but I’ll keep coming back. I’ll be the very essence of graciousness each time, but I’ll keep coming back. That’s my plan.

[Whatever you think of that plan, I didn’t actually go back until more than two weeks later.]

Right before I went into the office I ran into a group of French-speaking ERASMUS students and the French girl helping them asked if I needed to go down and do the payment for my student card along with them. She asked in French! And she didn’t recognise me as one of the English speakers, so she asked it at full speed! And I understood! I didn’t know how to respond in French, so I said, ‘Yesterday’ in English, but I understood the question! I will get this.

Went shopping after that; had to withdraw some more money from overseas, hopefully this’ll be the last time.

*     *     *

I was just thinking about when we arrived at Toulouse-Blagnac airport. We swept out of there so quickly – waiting for our suitcases at baggage claim was by far the most time-consuming. The immigration officers or whatever they’re called asked us no questions, they simply (for me) turned to the French visa in my passport and stamped it. Coming to the UK the first time I had to produce my CAS letter, possibly other documents, and they asked me questions. I thought that the laidback-ness of our arrival in France boded well for the registration process and all other formalities awaiting us. It did not, it was a severe anomaly.

[This is the other complaint I referred to earlier that you are meant to take with a grain of salt. It’s not so bad, and like I said then, they gave us mini-fridges! Means I don’t even have to go to the kitchen and risk running into a French person when I wanna munch. That was a joke. I am practicing my French by speaking to French people, yes I am.]

But I’m not just tired of all these formalities, I’m tired of complaining about them, so for both my sake and yours I hope they pass quickly so I can go on to telling all of you about my lectures, my interactions with French cultures, my hilarious language goofs (for that I need to be far more daring – I promised myself I would be), and the people I meet. I’m sure they will; the first few days always seem the longest and hardest. But telling myself that doesn’t help as much as I want it to.

*     *     *

I guess one thing that makes it hard is feeling like a burden, what with not being able to speak even a minimal level of French. If anyone told me I was a burden on the system, I would angrily retort that the system is a burden on me, and that would be true. But I still feel like a burden, coming into their country and expecting them to, at least somewhat, condescend to my level. I need to at least repay them for that kindness.

What also came to me today is that the reason I’m so frustrated with the language barrier is not just that I can’t communicate, but that I can’t express myself. Language has so much to do with how I convey my identity and persona to others that, excluding that, I feel so little. They don’t know me. I don’t fully exist. Now, part of that is valid, and useful to know about myself, but it’s not alright that I am so focused on me and my conveyance of myself. I should be about actions, not words and impressions.

*     *     *

In the distance I see a plane rising into the sky (my window faces the airport, though I can’t see it). Do I wish I were on it?

[Perhaps I should interject that the reason this question comes quickly to my mind whenever I see a plane in the sky is that several years ago, after having been asked at numerous points through my life what I considered home to be, I came up with the following definition: home is where you can look up at a plane in the sky and not wish you were on it. So now I, unbidden, perform that test quite often.]

No. I’ll stick this out a little longer (by a little longer, I of course mean the entire year). I just need to find something to sustain me here, like City Vaults Sunday night jazz in Bradford.

Another reason I don’t wish I were on that plane is that landing in Toulouse on Sunday was the second time in my life I have felt a searing pain in my head during a plane’s descent, and when I say searing, I mean searing. As in it feels like something behind my left eye is growing and trying to escape. My eyeball starts watering and seems about to pop out, every nerve around it is on fire, little pinpricks on my forehead feel like needles stabbing from the inside out, and generally I get the impression my left brain lobe wants to get as far away from my right as possible. It’s awful.

I don’t like to complain about pain, I mean, I am male. I wasn’t even going to write about this originally, but as I’ve been flying all my life and this has only started happening in the past few years, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried. The first time was on a flight from Japan to the US last summer. Same sensation. I looked it up a few days after arriving, and at least I’m not the only one who’s experienced it (one of the joys of the internet). Apparently it’s caused by fluid filling some chamber in the head at high altitude, and then expanding as the atmospheric pressure builds. I’ve had some trouble off and on with nosebleeds in my life, and those are always from the left nostril, so some of my piping back there must be wonky. But since I didn’t feel it on my flight back to the UK, I thought (hoped) it was a one-off. Seems it wasn’t. I’ll have to do some more research, especially on potential remedies.

Because it’s not just about being able to comfortably use the fastest form of transportation currently available to mankind. It’s not just that I enjoy flying and want to continue to enjoy it. Flying, for me, is much more than those things; it is far more sentimental.

No, I don’t have childhood ambitions to be a bird or Superman that I’m secretly clinging to (though some of you might take issue with the latter claim). But I have been flying longer than I can remember. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, and airplanes have taken me between almost all of those places. You could say that the cabin of a jumbo jet has been a relatively constant physical location (with irony as my elixir) throughout my life, something I cannot say for any house in which I’ve lived. So air travel is a glue that holds all my life experiences together. After long periods without it, I miss flying like I imagine other people miss their hometown. As for the place I sometimes call my hometown, Yokohama, well, yes, I love it there, but I love it because it’s cool. I probably have stronger feelings for Tokyo and my high school, but Yokohama is cooler so I call it my hometown. I’m not sure that’s completely legit.

Going back to the previous point, I suppose that the reason my definition of home is so useful for me is that it’s not merely asking if I wish I were in a different place, it is asking if the place I am in right now beats being on a plane, a wondrous long-haul plane flight, with all the home-ness I attach to that experience. To be told that I cannot, or probably shouldn’t, experience that anymore would be, in my mind, akin to someone who finds out that they, for whatever reason, cannot return to their home, though I don’t wish to trivialise those actually in such situations. I realise that my mentality, or perhaps sentimentality, rather, is born very much of first world privileges.

There’s more I could say about this, such as that one thing I like about being on a plane (long-haul, of course) is that for the duration of that journey, everyone is from the same place and they are going to the same place. There is none of this pesky, ‘Where are you from?’ business. And likely some of what I have said could be said in a better way. But I will do that at a later date, in a far more polished form. For now, these are some of the thoughts flitting through my head as I watch that jet (Airbus-made, perhaps?) climb away from Toulouse-Blagnac. If you’re a fellow TCK I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said, or even if you’re not a TCK, I suppose.

That’s Wednesday.

Okay, I Missed You

I guess I didn’t truly realize until now how few people around me are actually ‘like’ me. By ‘like’ I mean people who had a least a few of the same experiences growing up as I did – TCK kinda stuff. I’m in the country I grew up in, yes, but nearly all my high school classmates, or any classmates, for that matter, are not here. They’re in America or elsewhere.

My circles, presently, consist of family, work, Hi-B.A., and church. Family is hardly a circle, but I included it because I realized it’s not actually a given. I was away from them last year and I will be next year. So I’m enjoying it now (that’s the proper thing to say). But it’s only my parents, and while I like them a lot, I don’t make myself vulnerable to them. That may sound like a weird way to say it. What I mean is that I talk a lot about what I’m passionate about, and they indulge me by listening, but I don’t share what I struggle with.

Work is teaching English at Gaba. My ‘clients’ range from university students to housewives to businessmen. The conversations are interesting, but it’s not about me, it’s about them – they’re paying to learn. I try to get as much as I can out of the conversations while still meeting their needs, and at the same time, I try to give them as much as possible without overstepping my bounds. It’s a good time, considering I’m getting paid for it. I wouldn’t call them friends. My coworkers are a hugely diverse lot, and quite different from me. Though I enjoy them immensely and share my experiences while listening to theirs, the connections are fairly light at this point. It’s limited to our interactions during mutual work hours, though that may change in the future.

Hi-B.A. is probably the closest company to where I came from (it is at the high school I graduated from, after all). But on the other hand, the students are all younger than me and the staff are all older.

I feel I need to add at this point, at least for my own relief, that I’m not complaining. Each of the circles I’m describing are basically how they should be. I’m not pointing out faults, I’m just explaining a need I realized I have and why it’s not being met at present. I hope you understand.

When I’m at Hi-B.A. I feel I have a purpose to accomplish, that is, the spiritual strengthening of the students who come. Not that that’s up to me, but I try to play a part. Not to say that I don’t merely enjoy their company as well. I do. But it’s a different company than my own friends.

And church is…unsatisfactory. It feels really old to me. Even though it has more young people than most Japanese churches, the young people feel old to me in the sense that they fit in to what has already been established and don’t seem to seek to change it. I’m not so much of a rebel (take that statement with a grain of salt), but I do want to see people being fulfilled in their identity rather than fitting themselves into someone else’s paradigm.

I want to go to a Japanese church because I want to be involved in the ministry instead of remaining within a foreign, Christian bubble (not to say that’s what certain people are doing). My place is in the field. But I don’t think that means sacrificing my worship, fellowship, and learning needs. There’s a medium, no, there’s a third option somewhere. I haven’t found it yet.

I don’t think it would be right for me to leave the church without at least proposing some changes. And that doesn’t sit well with me because I’m hardwired to run away from problems. But I will devote some thought to what I would like to see happen, keeping in mind that it’s not about me, it’s about God.

Those are my circles, and none of them identify with me particularly well.

This isn’t a self-pity party! I promise! You can say “Suck it up” if you want, honest. I say it to myself a lot. But now I’m trying to figure out how to remedy this slight issue. I think I need to for my own sanity, before it gets worse.

Probably the reason I’m think about this now, or that I realized this now, is that Christmas break is coming to a close for most uni students, during which a lot of my friends did come back to Japan. We hung out, and it was really good. But now they’re leaving.

I thought I was satisfied here, with my little self-made prosperous life-after-college-which-is-really-my-year-saving-up-to-go-to-college. But the past strikes again. I miss my friends, I miss people I can relate to.

I don’t like saying that I miss people, so keep this under wraps, okay? It could damage my image if it got out.

The way I see it, there are several things I could do to improve my situation.

• I could spend more time communicating digitally with friends overseas, staying in touch through means like Facebook, Skype, and, oh, that retro thing called e-mail. Skype is the best option, but also the hardest to arrange. I spend too much time on Facebook, but if I switched my activities from perusing (read: stalking) to messaging, it might approach the classification of ‘time well-spent’. Maybe. Digital communication still leaves a lot to be desired; I think I can do better than this.
• I could invest more in the relationships I have, particularly those at Hi-B.A. I’ve been feeling lately like I’m not putting enough of myself into that. I particularly would like to have one or more AGs (Accountability Group – you checked your knee-jerk reactions at the door, remember) in order to get to know some guys better and be mutually strengthened through fellowship. This might be what I’m looking for, and I need to pursue it harder.
• The last thing I can think of is to develop my friendships with my classmates remaining in Japan. I’ve been trying to meet up with one of them for a while, and I’ve seen a few others in the past few months, but for the most part I’ve dropped out of contact with them because I didn’t talk with them much even during the school year. I would like that to change, and since I am an awkward sort of fellow, it might be difficult at first, but I think I will try to initiate something. I need more justification to mock returning students’ feeble attempts at ‘reunions’, at any rate.

That’s my plan of action to deal with this lack of connection that seems to have festered under the radar since last summer. My theme for 2010 is discipline, and I think that maintaining good communications with people who matter to me is a big part of that, both for me and for them.

Or I could just be spouting off of an emotional outpouring brought on by recent events. In any case, I apologize for not taking the time to proofread this entry before posting it.

Comment.

-Brad