Adapting to a new country is a bitch

Every time you go to a new country, there's always a pesky period of adaptation you have to go through, and Colombia is no different. This period of adaptation is generally characterized by everything going wrong. I mean, EVERYTHING. A secondary characteristic, which may just be a symptom of the first, is that you feel completely out of place and you notice (whether it's actually there or not) a strange look in everyone's eye. You feel like an alien. And not the cute, gray kind, but the kind that like has five eyes, three mouths, some other identified appendage, and no manners whatsoever. The kind of alien where you don't even know where to look at when you're conversing. Some full blown H.P. Lovecraft, Azathoth shit.

It's great for self-esteem, let me tell you.

In order to show you how a day can go from normal to disaster without even trying, allow me to recount to you my last Wednesday, in which I tried to obtain my Colombian ID. It's called a cédula de extranjería, and when you have a long term visa, you're required to apply for one by your fifteenth day in the country or face the consequences which can be anywhere from a fine to deportation. This little nugget becomes important later.

I had intended to wake up at six a.m. just to be safe, but as we all make horrible decisions when we haven't gotten enough sleep, I decided to sleep in until nine. I got up, got dressed, had a short breakfast to try to make up some time, and I was out the door and onto Colombia's main public transportation system, the MIO.

I had never gone to the Migración office before, and I was in a bit of a rush, so I jumped on a bus I was pretty sure would take me there. To make sure, I decided to ask the girl sitting next to me what bus we were on: "¿Cuál es el número de este autobús?" Her response: "No hablo inglés."

Rude.

"No te hablo en inglés. Te estoy hablando en español. ¿Cuál es el número de este autobús?"

"E21."

"....Gracias."

You know, shit like that really pisses me off. Same as when you ask someone to repeat themselves once, and they either start speaking to you in English or they pass you off to their English-speaking co-worker. Like, really? We're in a bar. There's music blaring, and my asking you to repeat yourself has nothing to do with how you might need to speak up but everything to do with that I can't speak a language I've studied for well over a decade. Okay then...

Anyway, it was clear early on it was going to be that kind of day.

I got off two stops early to stop at the bank. I enter what I think is the right bank to pay for my cédula, and I'm told I actually need to go to the sister branch, two blocks down. So I do. As I walk up to the door, in some twist of tragicomedic kismet, I watch them shut the door and turn the lock as they look me right in the eye.

I basically freaked out, which looked something like this.

Click here to see
why Ingress is pretty awesome.

It turns out banks close here from 11:30 to 2:00. Yeah, you read that right. Two and a half hours. It was then that I started to worry about not getting to Migración in time. And that day was the deadline for my cédula. But I tried to keep cool. I played Ingress.

In the course of my wanderings, I discovered a supplement store, and as it was about one thirty at this point, I decided to go in, buy some better tasting whey than they were selling at my local supermarket, and then be on my way to the bank. Not so simple. It turns out they keep all the products in some other location and only keep display cases out. So when I finally decided on some overpriced whey, the guy left to go get it from this mystery storage center. I'm not sure what time he came back because at 2:45, I said I absolutely had to go, and I did.

When I got to the bank, I passed through the line twice because I didn't realize I needed to fill out a form. When I paid, I dashed down the street toward Migración. But when I got there, it was nowhere to be found. After asking about three different people, I found it hidden behind a series of other buildings. I also found it closed. The next day was a holiday. My deadline would be passed. I sat down and cried on the sidewalk. It had been a horrible day.

Epilogue
When I finally went back on Friday, they said I'd have to pay a fine. We went through the process of fingerprinting, registering everything, and they told me the website I can check to see when it's ready. They never asked for the money.

How to Have Fun in a Strip Club

This is what I thought to myself
once I got onto the bus.

So last week I had to make a decision: Stay in New York for pride or take up my friend Mike's offer to go down to Washington D.C. to visit him and my friend Jose. Since this would be one of the last opportunities I would have for a while and also that I'm liking D.C. a little more than NYC these days, I decided to go down for a short trip. I left at 7 a.m. on Friday after a very drunken night which included meeting fellow Fulbrighter Derek, a failed underwear party turned Eagle code night with Frank, and absolutely no sleep. As a pride weekend miracle, the Chinatown bus I took arrived at its scheduled time: 12 p.m. I was soon in Mike's apartment, napping it up, and when he arrived, we decided to go to a strip club called Secrets.

I've been to a strip club before. It was actually the same one I went to about two years ago with Jose. It was a disappointing experience. There weren't a lot of dancers, and the ones that were there weren't that attractive. To be quite frank, when you see a striper and think, "I've had sex with guys more attractive than you, and it didn't require sticking dollars down his pants and/or sock," you're a little demotivated to do more than pound back some drinks to make your visit worth it and then move on to the next bar. But Mike told me that this was the one night of the week that they dance without underwear and so I thought, "Well, at least there's that." And we went.

This time was a bit better. There were a wide variety of guys, all very good looking in their own way, and a bunch of people hanging around, drining and staring at the naked men. This alone provided about five minutes and six seconds of entertainment, so I already considered it an improvement over last time; however, after those five minutes, I was back to square one. "You're all pretty, and that's great, but now I want to go do something else." But Mike, on the other hand, was just starting up.

If you know me, you know I love talk to people. And if you don't know me, I just told you. I like poking at people and getting them to tell me the story that they're dying to tell someone. It's not as hard as it sounds because I, in turn, am dying to hear it. It's the best part about traveling. When you tell someone you're just passing through, they tend to consider you low risk because chances are they'll never see you again. That's how, the next day, I got Cheryl to tell me about the time she was held at gun point and had to fight off a potential rapist. Sounds dreary but combine that with a digression into Buddhism and you have a conversation about the triumph of the human spirit.

So Mike, being Mike plus three glasses of wine, started striking up conversations with all of them about their lives, if they were in school, what they're studying, and all sorts of other stuff, and that's when it dawned on me: Dude, just talk to them like any other guy you would at a bar. You know, where you're motivated by how attractive they are and that's what gets you to approach the person, but then once you get them to talk to you, you let it all fly to the wind after that because if you're letting a perfectly good human interaction be dictated by nervousness and fear, what's the point? Sure, sure, sure, they're not even wearing underpants, but why let that get in the way of you getting them to tell you an interesting story? It may sound totally bizarre, but it works for me.... because I'm bizarre.

Because, you know, nakedness...

So I talked to one guy about his bodybuilding competition coming up, to another about when his high school science teacher came to see him strip, and then another who didn't have much interesting to say but kept groping me so I called it a win because after that many beers, I don't know if I could still be considered the best conversationalist. (Sorry, I am a male after all.) And I ended up leaving having a good time after all.

Wherein Adam says his good-bye

My time in New York is coming to a close. Ten years ago, if you had told me this day was coming, I wouldn't have believed you. I wouldn't have imagined a day that I would willingly leave, and now I'm ready to go and have been for the last year or two. And despite the love affair turned bitter-marriage-kept-together-for-the-kids, I'm having a hard time leaving New York now that the time to go is right before me. 

I didn't have a Toto
to bring with me though.

When I came here, this place was my haven and refuge. At seventeen years old and out of high school for a little under a month, I came here to begin my adult life. To begin forgetting and healing from the childhood I still prefer to forget rather than remember. This place helped me learn that all the things that made me feel so disjointed with where I grew up were something that other people would find fascinating and worth encouraging. It let me forget parts of who I was, so I could start to become who I wanted to be. It protected me. It pushed me by always threatening to break me but never really made good on those threats. It made me tough. And by making me tough, it taught me how to be compassionate. It showed me all sorts of wonderful people and things. It made me feel alive. It helped me to stop being afraid. Of everything. I learned how to think on my feet and turn my mistakes into their own solutions. It endowed me with a sense of self that will be my beacon and guide for the rest of my life, despite my self being far from a static entity.

And as I go and remember all the things I loved about New York while seeing all the reasons it's no longer working out, I can't help but feel jealousy when I see other people here in New York, continuing on with their lives, some of them living the life I wish I had found. Or once had but grew tired of. I'm still not sure which. I became disillusioned at some point, and I'm not sure if I'm going to bounce back from that lack of faith without time away. Wishing and jealousy won't change that. Jealousy, by the way, is a new thing for me. That doesn't happen often, which makes it harder to deal with, and of course, makes me feel crazy. But as we established last week, I'm not really feeling myself these days. Whatever that means.

^^New personal mantra^^

Unlike the last time I went abroad, going to Colombia isn't just a break in my life to do something new and then return home. When I come back to the United States, there's not much to come back to. There are my family and friends, and I don't mean to downplay their importance to me, but I feel a bit homeless again. Indiana is only my hometown in name, and New York has always felt like home but now it's a home that no longer fits with me. I guess maybe that's why nomadism has started to appeal to me: to find a new home, wherever in the entire world that may be.

Something that I'm learning is that no matter what kind of time you have and no matter how you planned it, there are always loose ends when you leave a place. There's people you wish you had gotten to know better, there's places you wish you had visited, and things you wish you had done. Good-byes you wish you had said or somehow sadistically wanted to feel grander, bigger, more emotional, and not as if you were going to see each other the next day because it's hard to imagine you're not going to. One last run in Central Park, one last visit to the Bourgeois Pig, one more trip to Jones Beach, one more day to... But time ticks by, things end, they change, and they have been changing. Kate's Joint closes, you resign from running a theatre company you built out of nothing with one of your best friends, the monthly metro card raises another twenty dollars. And you have to say good-bye and you have to let go because you risk ruining everything you once had.

So... Good bye, New York. It's been real. It's been beautiful. I hope we can meet again someday when we're both ready.

To New York and Back Again

So I normally don't full on give away the next entry, but I'm going to. Next post is a bit like my goodbye to New York. Or at least my coming to terms with leaving. I've had a lot of awesome memories made with amazing people. I selected songs for this minimix that represent, to a degree, the arc of my relationship with the city. From coming free full of hope and hungry from freedom to a more mature outlook to a bit of disillusionment and questioning and then the beginning of a new realization of what home means. 

I hope you enjoy it.

And this is a bonus video. It's the version of "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City" that I wanted to include but couldn't find the full version on line. The monologue in the beginning captures the kind of magic I first felt when I moved here.

Have I lost it?

Life can change in such sudden ways that it can be difficult to bear, happening so quickly and so drastically that it challenges our sense of control and reminds us just how little we have. 

In the last month, and particularly the last three weeks, my life has shifted around so much I can barely keep up:

First, I got the news that I was selected as an alternate for the Fulbright, which I decided to take for the sake of my sanity as meaning I didn't get it, which, a week later, was followed by being told that I had been chosen after all. Then my boyfriend and I broke up, and related to that incident, I lost my apartment. Not too much later, I decided to leave New York a month earlier than I had planned, and on the same day, my mom called to tell me that they had induced my step father into a coma. Next, I got my apartment back and my step father woke up. But he ended back in the intensive care unit a few days later. Today I learned that he will be going home under hospice care.

To be very plain: I feel like I'm going crazy right now. I feel absolutely crazy. Not in any big way. In little ways. In the words I hear myself use and what I talk about these days. In the little decisions I make: to eat that Snickers bar when I normally would say no, to have that extra drink after my friends say they're going homes, to not be able to sleep when it's time to turn out the light and then not be able to get up the next day to do some errand I thought was important. Afterward, I try to beat myself up over these things. I try to harangue and lecture myself: “Why can’t you get it together?? You’re doing well enough. You’re almost going along as if nothing’s wrong. Just keep going, keep living, and you’ll be fine. You’re so close to fine, why can’t you just be it?” And I stop almost before I’ve really begun, realizing it’s not worth the energy, realizing I don’t even really have the energy.

I know this sounds a bit morose, and I can tell you, it's definitely not enjoyable. But I'm getting through it. Things are going to get better. And I don’t mean this in the way people often tell themselves and each other. I know this for a fact. I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. Soon, I will be in a new land with so many people to meet and things to see and do. I'll be doing things I love for a livable wage for the first time ever in my life! For the first time ever, I won’t be working some sort of day job in order to do what I really care about. No proofreading financial documents, no waiting tables, no working retail.

Did you think I could resist?

Because, you see, you can’t decide to make a big change in your life without it having consequences. These decisions we make—to change a career, to move to another country, to leave behind everyone you know, to trade roots for wings—come in like wrecking balls. They smash everything to bits because things have to fall apart so they can be reshaped into something new. It entails pain. And confusion. And fear. These are the things that come when you let go of everything that came before. Being stripped of what you used to tell yourself who you are and having to see what is actually there. Who is Adam if he no longer lives in New York? Who is Adam if he actually enjoys his job? Who is Adam if he has to start all over again in a new place? And then do that over and over for the next couple years?  These questions have answers not in words but in movement, in action. It's time to be brave.