Calling Long-Distance…

Well, maybe… But sometimes it’s nice to actually be there.

We all try long-distance at some point. Whether the family moves, the friend group splinters when you all go off to different colleges or the best friend goes off to summer camp for a month while you’re stuck at home, we’ve all done it. For me, it first happened when I moved continents at age fourteen. It happened when I went off to college. It happened during my study abroad program to Amsterdam. It’s happening as friends graduate, go to grad school, find jobs, live lives. If there are three things I’ve learned from the relationships I’ve tried (and sometimes failed) to maintain long-distance, it’s these:

1) It doesn’t always work out

Sometimes, no matter how many promises you make to write faithfully, call, text, Skype, stay in touch, it just doesn’t work out. Somebody gets too busy, somebody else feels hurt, and before you know it, it’s been a few months since you contacted each other and you know what, one of you is completely okay with that. Being the other one is awful, but at some point, you have to move on. It’s painful and you can’t help wondering what you did wrong. I sometimes think that, although communications technology is wonderful, it puts you under more pressure to stay in touch. After all, something must have gone wrong if you couldn’t stay in touch with all these ways and means at your fingertips, right? Not really. People change and sometimes, a relationship just ends with not much reason and no rhyme at all.

2) Don’t cling

Because it’s so easy to see on social media where someone last breathed, it’s tempting to want to know exactly what your best friend has been up to in the last thirty seconds. You spent every minute of your time together before you were separated, didn’t you? So how can you live without knowing what outfit your best friend picked for today? Exaggerated, yes, but I’ve noticed that it’s tempting, if you’re the more communicative one in the relationship, to over-communicate. Friend hasn’t replied to your Facebook message of yesterday? Send another one about what you did today. No judgment, no why-aren’t-you-talking-to-me, just a friendly little reminder that you’re still here. But those reminders add up, and if you pile them up high enough, you could suffocate the life out of your friendship. Let the communication proceed at its own pace; don’t communicate just for the sake of communicating.

3) But still, don’t give up too soon

Don’t give up on a relationship just because you haven’t heard back in a while. People get busy, people get lazy, all sorts of things can come in the way of communication. Your relationship isn’t a failure because you said you’d email once a month and you haven’t emailed in six weeks. Let things develop and see what happens. Maybe the reason a friend hasn’t responded to the last three emails you’ve sent is because that friend has moved on. But maybe that friend just gets kind of lazy, but still really appreciates that you make the effort to keep writing. Whether things work out or not, as long as you feel you’ve done all you could to make a relationship work, you shouldn’t have regrets.

The Sound of Silence

I’m back! After just over two months away from the country, after an odyssey through Schiphol Airport that beats all my travel odysseys but one, after a nine-hour flight during which I was fed heartily and often (I’d recommend KLM, if you’re looking for a flight), I’m back.

My professors went on and on about reverse culture shock before we left Amsterdam. But I think I’ve been in and out of enough cultures in my life that returning to a culture I’ve spent six years getting to know (I don’t profess to know it completely yet) isn’t much of a shock.

But I notice things. The lack of water in my environment–after nine weeks spent surrounded by canals and a river, it’s a little strange to have to trek fifteen minutes to the neighborhood pond with its fake swans. The greenery that replaces it–lawns haven’t caught my attention this much in a long time. And, especially, the sound of silence.

Amsterdam is a city, and, as the cliche goes, cities never sleep. I could walk around at two in the morning and find someone strolling, striding or stumbling along in the mysterious yellow glare of street lights. Sirens screamed along the main road nearby at all hours of the night. Living on a boat made it even harder to find quiet. I often fell asleep to the sound of my neighbor Skyping her boyfriend or the water licking noisily at the side of the boat. Once it was the toilet slurping loudly. Once the wind howling against my window. There was always something.

It’s almost silent in suburban USA.

At least at home, the air conditioning whirs into life once in a while. Sound blurts briefly as my mother starts listening to a webcast before finding her headphones. There is some noise. Currently, though, I’m staying with a friend who has no air conditioning and is out most of the time. I sit out on her porch, waiting for the children at the elementary school across the road to sprint out to recess, for a car to drive by, glad even to hear the wind creep through the trees. When I’m inside, I jump when someone walks around in the apartment above, setting the floor creaking. I look around as the refrigerator begins to hum.

When the refrigerator is silent and no one upstairs is moving, it’s silent. The silence presses against my eardrums like something material, something with weight. It’s heavy, yes, but it’s peaceful.

The Orange Corner of My Heart

As I look through rain-spattered windows at the NEMO Science Museum on one side of the boat and most of Amsterdam on the other, I feel conflicted.

Though my nine weeks in Amsterdam were wonderful for all the usual reasons–my first time in Europe, my first time really traveling without family, Amsterdam as a city–there’s so much more about this trip that made it an experience that can’t be repeated. I heard over and over again that studying abroad is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I realize now how true that statement is. When am I going to have the opportunity to spend nine weeks in a new place again unless I move there? When am I going to learn about a city’s history and politics from very smart people who’ve lived here for most of their lives? When am I going to have no responsibilities on a trip abroad other than schoolwork? If I get another opportunity like this, I’ll consider myself very fortunate.

I haven’t gotten teary-eyed about leaving, but I had to blink a few extra times as I stared up at the grey sky after returning my bike this afternoon. My purple bike has been my most constant companion over these nine weeks, through wind, rain, hail (all rather unpleasant experiences) and sun. More than anything, though, it represents the freedom I had on this trip to see this city on my terms. I don’t own a car. I’ve never been able to just decide to go somewhere and go if it isn’t within a reasonable walking distance. Over the last nine weeks, I’ve had that freedom. If I felt like taking in some nature, I’d grab my bike and find a park. If it was stroopwafels I was craving, I’d bike to the grocery story to get some.

Which brings me to my next point. I’m going to miss the food, especially the sheer variety I’ve been able to try here. Late-night fries with mayonnaise, Dutch pancakes, doner kebabs in pita bread with garlic and chili sauce, the slightly sweet, slightly spicy, slightly Indian flavors of Surinamese food, the spice (oh, how I’ve been craving spice) of Indonesian food. And, of course, the desserts. I haven’t tried nearly everything I’d have liked to try (though it’s probably better for my health that I didn’t), but gelato from Metropolitan and stroopwafels were definitely favorites.

Still, I’m not in mourning about the fact that I’m flying out of Schiphol tomorrow. No, I always knew this trip would end and I’m ready to return home, mostly because of the people. It’s been great making friends among the fifteen other people on the trip with me, but I’ve missed my friends and my parents. It’s impossible to really know someone in nine weeks (no matter that we’ve been living in such close proximity that one person’s cold soon spread to the entire boat), and I’ll be happy to return to the people who know me best.

I’ll be extremely happy to eat some Indian food. I’ve gotten my spice from Indonesian food and some of my Indian flavors from Surinamese food, but I miss rasam and keerai molagoottal. I miss rajma and chana, and most of all I miss coconut, mustard seeds, turmeric, cumin and fennel. Bread, cheese and meat are all very well, but Indian food feeds my soul as well as my body.

I will also be happy to return to normal-sized houses. Life on a boat has been an interesting experience, one I wouldn’t trade for the world, but being unable to sit upright in my room wears on me. I’ll be happy to return to ceilings that are a couple of feet above my head instead of six inches, staircases that don’t seem like ladders and bathrooms in which I can turn around without bumping my elbows on the walls.

I’m happy to be going home, but a little corner of my heart has been dyed orange by this wonderful city and the time I’ve spent here.

Healing A Pain in the Rear End

I’ve been neglecting this blog; I won’t deny it. But with three papers to research and write, I’ve sometimes barely had the energy to journal, let alone entertain my faithful readers.

Yesterday, though, was one of those days that you just have to write about… So, without further ado, here it is. A post I wrote yesterday and couldn’t post because the internet connection on this boat is finicky at best and more fragile than a drop of water at worst.

“I biked twenty-five miles today (forty kilometres for those non-Americs out there). There. Bragging done.

When you mention biking, I think of falling. There was the day before my seventh birthday when I attempted to turn too sharply, ended up on the asphalt and slit my knee open so badly that I had to get three stitches and spend my birthday with my leg propped up on a cane stool, doing activities in a wizard-themed workbook. I don’t know why I remember the wizards. Perhaps because that birthday was somewhat less than magical. There was the most recent time, when my nineteen-year-old self decided to enjoy a spring day with a bike ride, swerved off the bike path by accident and tipped over while trying to get on again, picking myself up with two bleeding fingers and a bruised knee.

When you mention biking, I think of pains in the rear end (metaphorical ones). All those bike tires that went mysteriously flat, necessitating endless trips to the repair shop and, later, Meijer to buy new tubes. The pumps that refused to pump, leading to more flat tires.

But now, when you mention biking, I’ll think of the best day I’ve spent in the Netherlands thus far. Biking through the Dutch countryside gave me a view of Holland that I could never have seen in Amsterdam. Fields stretched into the distance, vividly green under blue or (more Dutch) grey skies, making me feel like I was all alone on the thin strip of asphalt cutting through. Cows, sheep and lambs sat, stood and frisked in the fields, making me swerve with their occasional baas and moos. Clouds of insects clustered around yellow flowers and tall grass growing along the side of the road (and smacked into every inch of my body as I rode through, covering me in a delicious pâté of insect innards). And the Markermeer (a huge saltwater lake that used to be sea before the Dutch and their dams came along) glistened calmly in the sunlight.

Villages popped up once in a while, their cobblestoned streets making my bike, teeth and everything else rattle as I bounced over them, my forearms actually hurting in one instance from the effort of keeping my handlebars steady. The biggest (and most touristy) of these was Volendam, where the masts of the boats in the harbor rose up across from Lennon’s Cafe, open eight days a week. Small brick houses with brightly-painted shutters sat cozily in alleyways, gazing back at the scores of tour groups who stared. I snacked on kibbeling there—pieces of fried cod that tasted like they’d been caught ten minutes ago.

But the best thing was just being outside with the sun on my arms and the wind in my face, feeling the calluses on my palms from the handlebars, feeling the muscles in my legs working hard as we labored up bridges (no hills in the flat Dutch countryside). I’ve spent much of the last week doing exactly what I’m doing now—sitting indoors typing at my computer. And while I was answering the call of school and good grades, it’s nice to feel physical instead of mental fatigue for a change.

I might have a literal pain in my rear end to think about tomorrow morning, in addition to a few others, but this memory of biking will be one of my most treasured from this trip.”