reentry shock: readjustment

50 Ways to Blend in Life Abroad

The fourth and final stage of reverse culture shock is termed readjustment. It may take time to get there (it took me a few years), but eventually, you will begin to feel comfortable once again on your home turf. Google “reentry shock,” and plenty of advice about the readjustment phase can be found. Some tell you to integrate aspects of life abroad into life back home. For example, cook a dish you can’t find anywhere since moving back. Others tell you to explore your home country through the lens of a traveler. I followed all the advice for the first few years after moving home. I made arepas the way my Venezuelan friends taught me. Traveling all over the great state of Texas, I assumed the role of tourist instead of native. I did it all in an effort to readjust as quickly and effectively as possible. 

Another piece of advice is to preserve the experience. Since I’d already done that with this blog, I reread and edited my posts from life overseas. In doing so, I found a lot of errors since I rarely edited at first, mostly exposing my struggles with forgetting to use hyphens and a lack of solid understanding about when to use the words everyday or every day. In this process, I came across a post where I talked about going back home one day, which was an interesting rearview mirror read. My reentry was far from the return home I Imagined in that post. I thought I might serendipitously slip back across the border into the United States much the same way I left. Instead, I frantically caught one of the last flights out of Europe, fleeing a global pandemic.

My hope in that post was that I would be able to carry the best pieces of life from foreign worlds back home with me. Below is a list of ways I have strived to do just that: readjusting to life in the United States. I borrowed most of it from living and traveling in other countries. There are 50 ways because I recently turned 50, which is around the time I started to finally feel like I was home. It’s a monumental age of sorts. It’s hard to wrap my mind around, but there is some wide open wisdom gained after living half a century on this planet. I imagine some of that is interspersed in this list as well.

1. Sometimes, life needs a reset. Moving out of the country is the jet plane of reset buttons. It changes everything. It transforms your life into what it can and should be. You will shed the old and begin again in a way you never would if you hadn’t left.

2. Budget your hard-earned money. Save for a future life. It will be here before you know it, no matter where in the world you live.

3. Keep a nice bottle of champagne chilled in the fridge for spontaneous celebrations. Amy Sedaris advises keeping a Peppridge Farm Coconut cake in the freezer for the same reason.

4. Take pictures. Write stories. Archive memories. Share these often with others.

5. Make most meals at home from scratch. A meal is always an event. So don’t skip breakfast, take long lunches away from a computer screen, and share homemade dinners with those you love.

6. Kids are the same everywhere. They are delicate and incredibly impressionable. Stop what you are doing whenever they speak. Listen as if they are revealing a rare discovery. 

7. Integrate foreign words as mantras into your lexicon. La Bella Figura in Italian is the pursuit of living luxuriously in each moment. It has nothing to do with money; it’s about creating joy and beauty in life’s moments. 

8. Define your core values and build a life around them. 

9. Work hard each week. Make your own money and way in this world. Stop and reflect on it from time to time. Then, map out your plan for the next five years.

10. Make new friends. Diversify friendships. Find friends who are younger and older. Friends who speak another language. Friends with different politics and perspectives. Friends for the many different activities in your life.

11. I agree 100% with Sophia Loren, “I’d rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0” 

12. Give gifts from around the world. Choose a country to gift from for someone the same way you might choose a card or wrapping paper. 

13. Time on this planet is finite. Count your blessings every day. Don’t take any of the days you have left here for granted.

14. Relationships should inspire you to be the best version of yourself. Let the ones that don’t go. And give every appreciative ounce of what you’ve got to those that do.

15. Celebrate new holidays. Why limit yourself? There are so many to choose from in this land of immigrants. All holidays are up for grabs. My latest holiday character craze is Befana, an old Italian witch who delivers candy to children on the eve of the Feast of Epiphany. She even sweeps up the floor on her way out the door, metaphorically sweeping away life’s pesky problems. Instead of leaving her cookies like Santa receives, a glass of wine with a few crumbs of food will suffice.

16. Buy a home. Incorporate into it curiosities from foreign worlds. Plant tulips. Hang seasonal pinatas. Sprinkle Hagelslag over your breakfast toast. Play rare overpriced West African music on vinyl. Make coffee using a Bialetti. Prop mannequins up and sit them outside on patio furniture to greet guests.  

17. Enjoy a scoop of gelato. Bring out grandma’s serviceware and silver. Use it to eat dinner on a Tuesday. Buy a beautiful bouquet of flowers for no special occasion. Splurge on expensive fragrance; wear it every day. Buy the highest thread count when shopping for bedsheets. None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. Savor life now in the moment.

18. Watch foreign films and TV. Read a book set in another country. Read a book written in another language. Mix international music on your Spotify playlist. Follow social media from across the world. 

19. Host thematic dinners. Italian and Mexican are our favorites. My husband does the cooking. His signature dishes are tomatillo chicken enchiladas and Italian bolognese. I incorporate thematic music, film, decor, drinks, and dessert.

20. Invest in good boots. A trench coat is a must. So is a cashmere sweater. Pencil skirts are always in style. Build a capsule wardrobe around high-quality staples. 

21. Drink coffee and tea; develop rituals around both.

22. Sneak as much movement as possible into your life. These should be activities you look forward to most days. Don’t go more than three days without doing so. Do this to take care of a body that has carried you this far, not to lose weight.

23. I’m adopting a French Women Don’t Get Facelifts attitude to aging. Skip the botox and chemical peels. Invest in quality skin care. Aim for eight hours of sleep and eight glasses of water every day. It might not work, but I am willing to take the risk. I’m sure the extra money will be helpful during my AARP years, which I believe are technically already here.

24. Teachers are superheroes. Remember this if you are one. Treat the teachers in your life as if they wear a cape and save innocent lives because wearing ridiculous costumes and executing frequent emergency drills both fit the job description. 

25. Spruce up the spare bedroom and prepare it for spur-of-the-moment guests. Even better if they are international guests. 

26. Love your family unconditionally. Think of it as good practice for developing a live and let live approach to the broader community beyond. 

27. Embrace the land from which you hail. One of the first things I did after moving home was tour all five missions in San Antonio. I am endlessly fascinated with the riveting tale that is Texas history. 

28. Marriage is a great treasure. Treat it as such. And if it doesn’t go as planned, don’t lose hope because you never know what is going to happen next in life. Keep an open heart and romanticize life and each day’s new adventure.  

29. Ca va? The French answer honestly. They aren’t afraid to speak their mind even when the truth is uncomfortable. Scoff at toxic positivity. Other countries see through this American facade. Feel what you feel and accept your human emotions, both good and bad. And don’t be afraid to express them, especially when something seems harmful and unjust. 

30. You are not too old, and it’s never too late. My dad started working as a commercial pilot for American Airlines at fifty. My grandmother earned her Master’s in French and began teaching college at The University of Texas in Arlington at fifty. Fifty is a turning point, but it is more like the beginning of a new chapter or maybe even a new book. 

31. Italians eat cookies for breakfast. Keep a cake stand on the kitchen counter for chocolate croissants. Celebrate mornings with sweets occasionally as if you live in Italy or France. Indulge in these pastries with a thimble-sized cup of motor-oil strong espresso.

32. Sunday is meant for relaxing and spending quality time with family and friends. It’s best to do as little work as possible on Sunday. 

33. Don’t let Monday stress you out. Use it as a transitional time to ease into and prepare for the busy week ahead. Finish up the chores you didn’t get to over the weekend, mindfully prep for healthy meals, and make a list of things to do. Tuesday can still be transitional as well. A busy life needs lots of planning time.

34. Aldi is an upscale grocery shop in Italy. Experiment with shopping at Aldi in the US. It is a great place to buy cheap staples: pasta, legumes, grains, and nuts. Sometimes, you can even find garden gnomes and European chocolates. On an interesting side note, Aldi and Trader Joe’s have European roots to a time long ago when the German store split into Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud over a sibling disagreement about selling cigarettes. Both shopping experiences feel similar in some ways but not others. I like to go to Aldi for the basics and pick up specialty items at Trader Joe’s. And living in Dallas offers neverending Latin American options where even more bargains can be found. Dallas has the world covered when it comes to finding foods from all over the map.

35. Plan your next trip. Take a road trip or visit a bustling city or, better yet, another country. Some places make you feel like you are on another planet or have time-traveled to a historical era. Put a few of these destinations on your bucket list and prioritize travel.

36. Fill your home with film, music, and books. These are the staple ingredients of daily life.

37. Schedule weekly spa appointments. Self-care is essential, especially if your life involves caring for children all day. 

38. Don’t underestimate the importance of morning and evening routines, especially if you are a member of the 5 AM club.

39. Elevate the conversation. Interesting people talk about ideas and creative pursuits. On that same note, Gossip is the devil’s telephone. Best to just hang up.

40. Treasure hunt. Shop locally. Visit antique stores. Frequent thrift shops. Support independently owned boutiques and local artists.

41. Subscribe to a favorite magazine delivered old-school style to your physical mailbox. 

42. Visit a cafe. Leave your phone at home. Bring your mailbox magazine. Order coffee and sit sipping it for an hour or more. Meeting a friend for an Aperol Spritz is even better. 

43. Rescue a creature in need. There are plenty of pups to pluck off the mean city streets. Ours was found skin-and-bones shivering under a car on a cold November morning in the midst of a Texas storm. Spoil the poor creature. Use foreign terms of endearment and foreign words for commands. She responds with a helicopter tail to dushi, the Papiamento word for sweet. And we recently gave her the nickname Boef, after my Dutch friend visited and called her that. It roughly translates to mean bandit in English. She also speaks Italian and understands that basta means enough. 

44. Create art Kurt Vonnegut style–meaning do it only for the pure joy of creating something, anything. 

45. Decorate your workspace with souvenirs. Eat fresh fruit as a mid-morning snack. Drink herbal tea in the afternoons. Take a Pinterest break at 4 PM. Walk outside under the sun if the weather permits. Plenty of small luxuries can be infused into the humdrum of the workplace and workday schedule. 

46. Learn another language. By far, the best skill I picked up working abroad. Maintain it once you return. I carry weekly conversations in Spanish on Zoom with a Peruvian who lives in Chicago. This would never be penciled into my schedule if I hadn’t lived in Latin America for four years. 

47. Perspective in life is everything. I like to think of it as looking through a View-Master Classic. You can turn the wheel to change how you see the world anytime. 

48. There are many international experiences to recreate in any major U.S. city. I recently found an authentic Colombian restaurant in Carrollton, of all places. It was down the street from the apartment complex where I grew up. I appreciate that they only speak Spanish at Casa Vieja and serve a traditional meal of Pandeja Paisa along with the most delicious soursop margarita.

49. I was always thrilled to meet Americans abroad, no matter their background or beliefs. I could sit and talk to them for hours in faraway places like the frozen salt flats of Bolivia, perhaps while sharing a pizza as Lou Reed played on the speaker above our booth. Since moving back home, I’ve decided to take this same approach to meeting my fellow citizens. We have more in common than differences that divide us. We are living the dreams our grandparents and great-grandparents built for us. The best way we can honor them is to work together to do the same for the next generation. 

50. Give of yourself. Share your expertise, time, interests, talents, skills, love, understanding, whatever you have to give. Do so generously and enthusiastically. After a half-century of life, I’m convinced that this is why we are all here.

reentry shock: alienation

Springback to Fast-food Chicken Consumption 

Stage three of reverse culture shock began in late April with chicken. Specifically, the greasy fried kind ordered at fast-food restaurants all over the United States. I had a sudden and disturbing realization that one could find these chicken chains on every corner across an endless sprawl of banal American shopping strip landscape. Cars lined up and snaked around the chicken building, idling in the drive-thru, sometimes overflowing into the street and blocking traffic as each new customer followed their chicken wing whim. More US cars lined up for drive-thrus than I’d ever remembered seeing. I counted an astounding 52 cars once in line for Chick-fil-A. And one line wasn’t enough anymore for America’s growing appetite; some of the more popular places had two lines. Overly exuberant teenage workers stood outside, stationed along the way wearing reflective neon safety vests, cheerily, yet eerily, ready to take your order and god bless you goodbye. 

Everyone everywhere in America seemed to be waiting behind the driver’s wheel to get their fingers, nuggets, and strips. Google “Chicken in Dallas,” and the Yellow Pages lists the top 30 restaurant chains. Top 30? How many more are there after that? How many chicken fast food restaurants does one city need? Chicken-loving customers in Dallas can choose from a long list with names like Popeye’s, Williams, Slims, and Bo’s. This country’s surplus in the consumption of chicken meals made me question my strange place of origin. Who are these people? Why must they eat so much chicken? Is it only a matter of convenience? And how convenient is it when there are 20 cars ahead in line? 

Stage three begins the roughest point of reentry shock. Experts in this sort of thing characterize it with the feeling that you don’t belong. A sense that you are a stranger in your own country. Things change at home. Home seems different somehow. You changed while you were away. It’s difficult to understand how exactly, much less to communicate this to others. They are not so interested anyway. Why should they be? Life abroad is only interesting for the person who was there. 

There are layers to this third-stage alienation step of adapting back to one’s home culture. These vague, out-of-place feelings begin to surface while peeling away the papery parts of the re-entry onion. Peel enough back, and you will ask where you fit in this new world called home. Eventually, another figure of speech is needed from the produce section altogether. The Brazilian expression descascar o abacaxi fits perfectly. It translates to peeling the pineapple and means tackling a prickly problem. Acclimating back to American culture at the pandemic’s peak would be just that. 

Surviving Summer in the Big Texas City 

By summer, I felt like a stranger in my own country, fighting to navigate the basics of survival. It was a summer hustle like I’d never experienced. I needed a job, a roof over my head, and a reliable car to commute between both. I needed to find all the above in a city that had grown by more than a million people in the five years since I’d left. After residing on a Caribbean island for years, I was far behind the mark on managing life in a major US metropolitan area. And scrambling to reconstruct it all while the whole country was locked up inside, hiding away from a mysterious airborne virus, seemed insurmountable.

By the end of June, and after a few months in lockdown working the night shift teaching students virtually in Italy, I still hadn’t pulled together any semblance of a functional American life. Withdrawing cash weekly from my Italian bank account, I routinely used an ATM in the front lobby at the Comfort Inn, where I had stayed for two weeks to quarantine. I knew the machine would deliver cash to hand, and I guess I had fears that any other ATM might swallow up my card and leave me without an income to survive, albeit an income suited for another country where the cost of living was a fraction of life in Dallas.

My phone only worked where I could find wifi to use WhatsApp since there was still a foreign SIM card inside. I held out for months before finally letting go of that Italian phone number and signing up for a new service in the States. Mainly because US phone service is significantly more expensive, and not having a US number seemed to be the last barrier between a world abroad and reentering a system where I became a constant target in American marketing. I wasn’t used to being cornered and cajoled with invasive questions for every purchase, whether a pack of gum or a dining table with chairs. Inevitably, the cashier would always ask:

“Do you have a phone number with us?”

“No.” 

“Would you like to sign up with your phone number as a rewards member?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Are you sure about that? You can save 20% on your purchase today.” 

“No thanks!” 

“That would be $16.50 off your total.” 

“Actually, I don’t have an American phone number.” 

“We would only need an email to apply for a store credit card, which offers cashback promotions.”

“No, thanks. I’d just like to buy my toaster oven and go.”

“Would you like to at least sign up for notifications using your email? You can stay informed about our weekly deals.” 

“I don’t even live in the United States.” 

That would usually end things abruptly, but technically, I couldn’t use those words anymore to end these exchanges.

The world was unpredictable, so I held on to a car I had left behind with my family—a dilapidated Honda I named Green Monster. My dad loaned the Green Monster out to anyone who had fallen on hard times while I was away. There was some cosmetic wear and tear: Dented bumpers imprinted with poles hit by single moms zipping out from underground parking garages. Ripped upholstery etched from the claws of rambunctious foster pets. Window tinting peeled away by the tiny fingertips of curious youngsters. Missing door handles ripped off by harried, desperate neighbors in need. 

My father used gray duct tape and green spray paint to meticulously repair everything. He cared for the Green Monster as if it were a rare emerald found in the jungles of Colombia. He’d routinely cover it with the makeshift padding of old bed comforters whenever a Texas thunderstorm threatened. The neighbor’s BMW would be pelted to destruction by baseball-sized hail, but the Green Monster survived every storm unscathed. “This car runs like a top,” my dad proudly gleamed as he patted the creature’s head on its sunroof, sealed off from leaks with impenetrable adhesive. “And it’s so easy to park,” he added. Never has a wreck of a car been so doted on as the Green Monster.

In my mind, the Green Monster was an abominable piece of machinery. It seemed that way because some electrical problems made it act out at inconvenient times. The alarm would go off intermittently; the taillights would go on and off unexpectedly. The taillights went out once while driving down the tollway one morning on the first day of a new job. The cop who pulled me over—hours before the sun began to beam its rays on this American side of the planet—let me go without a ticket, out of pity, I presume. I rebuilt my new American life behind the wheels of that car amidst all of its electrical tantrums. 

An old Honda would cost a fortune in a country like Aruba, but I felt like a true outsider driving that heap in Dallas. Nothing else like it communicates how much catching up you have to do after living in remote parts of the world. One cannot overstate the influence cars have on American culture and the impact driving a nice car has on an American’s status within said culture. In Aruba, everyone bought Hyundais. And in Italy, everybody took the bus. 

There were other aspects of re-entry shock to be experienced via American car culture. I winced at the metal debris from crashes littering the side of the roads. I had become accustomed to wooden signs warning islanders to slow down at major roundabouts, posting a deterrent to speeding with the number of fatal automotive accidents every year: usually between 1 and 3. It took me months to catch up above 45 mph in the big city. One day, when I was beginning to find my comfort zone on the freeway again–barreling down it at around 70 miles per hour—a car burst into flames in front of me. I swerved across three lanes of speeding traffic to avoid the oncoming fire while watching the car screech to a stop in my rearview mirror as an inferno on wheels ejected four teenage boys out each door. Clearly running from the law that would soon arrive, they bolted towards the embankment and rolled down it out of sight. This is why those true-life crime shows are always filmed in Dallas. With scenes like this on the daily, the city provides endless material.

Falling Behind in Public Education

By the autumn of phase three, I still felt I was in a world where I did not belong. Fleeing Italy just five months ago, I landed a job and leased a downtown apartment at the pandemic’s peak. Still, life at home was dramatically different from the United States of America I had left in 2015. It felt like I had returned to another planet in a faraway, bleak galaxy. It didn’t help that COVID-19 had utterly transformed the day-to-day of American society. 

I took the first job offered to survive the times, working with Dallas Independent School District, teaching English language learners in Oak Cliff about Texas history. My international experience landed me the job, but I wasn’t prepared for the apocalypse in American education ahead. Arriving for my first work day, I dodged construction left and right. The ongoing construction, paired with the Covid protocol of masking up and keeping six feet from other human beings, accentuated the dystopian vibe. The classroom assigned to me was a spacious one with windows, which was about the only thing it had going. 

Opening the door for the first glimpse of my new home, the room sat empty except for a towering relic in the middle of the room—a beige filing cabinet left behind from 1974. Its door handles were missing, and decades of goopy sticker shavings covered the surface. Next to that cabinet sat a beige plastic chair, and on top of that chair was a mammoth roll of barrier tape that read: Danger Asbestos Hazard. Beside the chair was a filthy trash can; picture the kind with years caked in layers of unidentifiable residuum. Discarded and abandoned inside the trash can, a scraggly teddy bear looked up at me with desperate eyes. I thought to myself, Ahh, buddy, I know how you feel. I felt the same way, thrown into the trash of public education in American society. Pulling the poor creature out of the bin, I quickly gave him a proper home atop the plastic chair where he could sit upright with dignity. I threw the asbestos tape in the trashcan and placed it outside my classroom door. Then I wabbled the filing cabinet out into the hallway as well. I had a plastic chair and an old teddy bear to start the school year. I’d have to buy everything else with my own money—including a mop and an industrial-sized space heater. 

Looking for a reprieve from the harsh environment inside my classroom those first few days at work, I sought out a cold drink in the teacher’s lounge. This room was also empty except for yet another beige plastic chair. On top of this chair teetered an 80s-era microwave. This was the only chair in the teacher’s lounge, so there was obviously no lounging to be done. I did find a soda machine, but it was unplugged and apparently out of order. The refrigerator, however, was plugged into the socket and seemed to be working. As I opened the door, a dim light flickered while an old motor buzzed, but the inside was empty and covered with speckled grime. It smelled faintly of gym socks. Obviously, this place did not receive frequent visitors. Once school finally started, it became a quarantine room for students who showed symptoms of COVID-19. 

I developed a strict morning routine during this stage three station of life. Arriving at seven each morning, I tidied up the mess left behind by the construction crew working the night before, usually remnants of burrito wrappers scattered across my desk. I’d scrub the classroom down with Clorox wipes. The room was never cleaned; it was only sprayed with some mysterious mist that supposedly killed the virus but also curled up the edges of all my paperwork. Then I’d scramble to put together a lesson plan to be delivered both online, talking into my laptop to a grid of postage-stamp-sized people and face-to-face with students already waiting in line six feet apart on the sidewalk outside my window. Freezing cold or sudden downpours, they’d be standing in line until 7:30 AM when the doors finally opened. They would then proceed inside single file fashion, methodically dipping their foreheads down towards the muzzle of a temperature gun. Next, they would hold out their hands to receive a spurt of hand sanitizer. Finally, they’d pick up a brown paper bag and stand in line again, silently and six feet apart, along the wall in the hallway for another 20 minutes with a plexiglass divider in one hand and brown bag breakfast in the other. I remember thinking it was like watching a factory assembly line of children.

I taught back-to-back classes from 7:45 – 3:00 with 45 minutes of quiet time between the morning and afternoon to eat lunch and complete work that did not involve supervision and direct instruction. Inevitably, some of that “quiet” time would be used to monitor behavior outside my classroom. Even with a limited number of kids on campus, altercations would routinely break out after lunch in the hallway bathroom across from my classroom door. Students would flock to the fight to TikTok a video of it. Getting footage of a teacher freaking out while trying to break up the scuffle would generate the most views. Even on the days when kids weren’t trying to physically hurt one another, I usually spent my last class of the day diffusing verbal hostility shot back and forth. My job was to keep class under control so that nothing escalated into physical violence while teaching students to “Remember the Alamo.” 

Let me pause to offer praise for the teachers I worked with during that time. They were some of the best I’ve ever known. You have to be to survive inner-city public schools, especially during Covid. And students are the same everywhere. Most were eager to learn and be successful, but the US public school system is failing them. Standardized testing is the most significant piece of the problem. We had students at home for over a year because of Covid. When they finally returned to school, the first thing they did was sit down behind plexiglass and take the STAAR test. I tallied ten total weeks of standardized testing. The testing companies are making bank, money that would be better spent putting professionals in the classrooms serving students by building relationships and providing the emotional and academic support they so desperately need.

By December, I’d somehow escaped getting Covid, but my central nervous system had received quite a jolt. Counting down the hours until Christmas Break, DISD heavy weights shimmied into my classroom, pushing a rolling cart and singing carols. Decked out in sequin Santa hats and reindeer antlers, their demeanor beamed as they delivered our Christmas gift. “Happy Holidays!” I was handed a miniature can of room-temperature Coca-Cola and a caramelized popcorn ball. 

In the teacher’s world, a popcorn ball comes with a corny tagline. No one is butter than you! There is an incredibly bizarre practice in public schools of gifting teachers with items that could be bought at 7-Eleven or dispensed from a vending machine, each with a punned message. A bag of taco seasoning reads Taco about an amazing teacher. A water bottle has a message wrapped around thanks for making our students thirst for knowledge. A pink eraser says the influence of a teacher can never be erased. Anyone could scrap these gifts together in under a minute from junk inside their desk drawer. And the pandemic brought about endless new possibilities. A face mask states we simply cannot mask our gratitude. Hands down you are the best around is taped onto a bottle of hand sanitizer. I received both of those gifts when Covid was killing thousands of Americans every day. I received gifts like this even after a teacher died from Covid at our school. If someone survives the day by dodging a virus, or even a bullet nowadays, these gifts somehow seem distasteful and insanely inappropriate. 

Texas Missions and Winter Blast

After a long semester of staying alive and developing new skills in teaching, we took off for San Antonio to see the Spanish missions over the New Year holiday. Amid all the aforementioned madness, I was genuinely happy and super enthusiastic to teach Texas history, fascinated by the epic history of my homeland under all six flags, especially the first two. 

The beginning of Texas history under the flag of Spain is haphazardly connected to the conquest of Mexico. Some of the first Spaniards to set foot in Texas were shipwrecked survivors. They would have never washed up on the Texas shore if their captain had not lost his eyeball to Hernan Cortes. Their leader was Panfilo de Narvaez, and he’s famous for two failed expeditions. During the first, he was sent with orders by the governor of Cuba to intercept Cortes’s conquest of Mexico, although somehow Cortes convinced all of Narvaez’s men to join his army instead of capturing him. Spain took pity on Narvaez when he returned home and offered to finance another expedition to the Gulf Coast—from Flordia to Mexico—as consolation for his lost eyeball. On the second, he landed around modern-day Tampa Bay, Florida, and detoured inland to scout out the territory. He returned farther north shore to find his ships missing. Stranded in a hostile land, Narvaez and his ninety men cobbled makeshift rafts from tree trunks, using their clothing as sails. They survived two weeks of storms in the Gulf of Mexico before washing up near Galveston Island. In the end, Narvaez perished at sea, and only four Spaniards survived to tell the tale, eventually escaping captivity amongst the natives and walking to Mexico City. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the four survivors, wrote a book accounting the whole ordeal. 

The French moved haphazardly on Texas a hundred years after the Spanish and also suffered a disastrous fate. Initially headed for the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle also lost his way at sea and washed up on the Texas shore. Very few of the three hundred men who set sail with him survived. Most died from Indian attacks, disease, poisonous fruit, snakes, and even an alligator who swallowed up at least one Frenchman as he crossed the Brazos River. Others were crippled: trampled by buffalo herds or sliced up by wild boars. Some just disappeared into the woods. Years later, a few from France’s short stint in Texas were found naked and tattooed, living amongst the indigenous folks. These individuals were barely recognizable to the Spanish, who were there to build missions, mainly to thwart the French moving in from the east. 

Texas was the rough and deadly frontier land of New Spain during that time. Spain’s mission system was an attempt to tame it. The most impressive missions were built along the San Antonio River, beginning in 1718 with Mission San Antonio de Valero, the Alamo. Four more were built after that. It’s hard to believe you are in the United States when you go on tour along the 10-mile stretch connecting them all.

Traveling to these missions helped me maintain an identity that was quickly fading away. Taking Texas excursions like this from time to time helped salvage something of the person I had become abroad. I loved reading about the history of places and then routinely immersing myself in another country and culture. Now, I found myself isolated between two vast oceans in the middle of a massive expanse of homogenized states. But there were still pockets of history and culture to explore. At least Texas shares a border and history with a foreign world below. And Dallas is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. I can sample Bandeja Paisa at authentic Colombian restaurants or find Mulino Bianco cookies at Jimmy’s Foodstore on Fitzhugh. I was learning to mix parts and pieces from my life abroad into my new life back home. And I was seeing Texas through an outsider’s lens for the first time. 

Upon returning to work in January, COVID-19 was rampant on campus. Kids were coming down with it almost every day. Anyone sitting next to a diagnosed case in class would be sent home for a week. The teachers, however, were not allowed to leave because there were no subs to take our place. Somehow, I managed to stay healthy. I was relieved when the Winter Storm of 2021 hit because I did not have to worry about getting the virus for a few days. I had time to reflect on all that had happened—albeit my reflection took place in the freezing cold without running water. Millions were without electricity and running water for days, and the whole state was frozen. 

We walked outside each day through the streets of downtown, a vast, empty winter wonderland of white snow reflected in glass skyscrapers all around. It was a downtown experience I had never had in Dallas. Something about the icy, stark scenery cleared my head and gave me space to think about everything I had been up to that moment. I thought about all I had accomplished. On what life abroad taught me. On what I had gained and lost. On what really matters in life. On my shifting priorities. On the things I did and didn’t want going forward. And then, I set out to reshape my new American life with determination as if my life depended on it. All of a sudden, in that moment, I knew exactly what I needed to do. 

I remember walking in from the freezing cold, and as we took off our hats and gloves, I told my soon-to-be husband, “I have to find another job. I should be making more money than what DISD is paying. I just want to be treated like a professional again.” In the following months, I found a new job, the perfect fit and down the street from the home we would eventually buy. I also took a road trip to raft the Colorado River and hike the Rockies. By Christmas, I was feeling more and more like an American every day. I became less annoyed with cashiers asking for personal information. And sometimes, I even found myself waiting in a fast food line for chicken nuggets.

reentry shock: euphoria

Waltz Back Home Across Texas

Flight AZ 608 took off from Rome at 10:51 AM on March 22, 2020. Seated onboard and clicked into my seatbelt, I could finally catch my breath and slow down the racehorse inside my chest. The derby was done. My heart would soon resume a slower, steadier beat. I had no idea what to expect once the plane landed at JFK. Would I have to quarantine? Would I be able to board a plane to Dallas? None of these thoughts worried me because I had just entered Phase Two of Reentry Shock—Euphoria.

Euphoria fits the description of what it feels like to board a plane home when the entire world goes into lockdown. Everything on that flight rocked my startled soul back and forth until I was in a sleepy state of bliss: A soft-spoken flight attendant served me a glass of wine. A compartmentalized tray served up a hot dinner of pasta with veggies. My tiny tribe of American passengers murmured familiar words in English. There was even a surplus supply of pillows and blankets. Each passenger had three of everything since they had spaced everyone on the flight to sit in every other row. After dinner, I stretched out across the seats to snuggle up with an extra pillow and blanket. Some five hours later, I woke up in New York City as Lady Liberty welcomed me home.

Excitement is the overarching emotion of the second stage of Reentry Shock, also known as Reverse Culture Shock, as one anticipates reuniting with family and friends. Only there would be no family and friends to greet me when I finally made it home to Texas three days later. I’d just left Italy, the epicenter of the virus as it spread to the rest of the world. And I’d spent the night before in NYC, a hotspot for Covid in the United States. My only choice then was to go into quarantine for two weeks. 

I landed at Dallas Ft. Worth International Airport—the fourth busiest airport in the world—and it was a ghost town. I waited with maybe four or five others at baggage claim while wondering how I would get to the hotel to quarantine. After collecting two suitcases of everything I had to carry me forward for a few months, I surveyed the transportation scene and counted one beat-up heap of a car offering service as a taxi. 

Could it be? Was this for real? Or was it some kind of mirage from lack of sleep? It felt like this was the last taxi on Earth. Everything was wrong with this scene. It had all the characteristics of a gritty true-crime TV show or bad science fiction movie. It was as if the driver and I were the only two people left in the world. There was a sense of comfort in seeing he had shown up to work that day, but it also worried me that he was coated in dirt from head to toe with hair on his head matted enough to mistake him as homeless. His behavior was also quite erratic; he shifted from side to side while his eyes darted down to the ground again and again as if he were tracking something moving beneath his feet. 

He quickly coaxed me over to a car that looked like something from a pile in the pick-n-pull junkyard. Under normal circumstances, I’d logically avoid this man and find another ride. But nothing about any of this was normal. After turning my luggage over to the strange cab character, I collapsed inside the rusted-out wreck. I could never identify the stench inside. Stinky feet? Rancid food? Happy to have a mask firmly covering my nose, I rolled down the window to an unusually hot and humid Texas spring day as the car smoked and sputtered down the empty freeways. The 20-minute ride cost 100 bucks. What kind of welcome home was this? Texas seemed vexed with me. 

I was dropped at the Comfort Inn for a 2-week stay. In the few frantic hours I’d had to plan my escape before leaving Europe, I gave haphazard instructions to those offering to help, “Can you find a flight from NYC to Dallas? And a place to stay overnight near JFK?  Oh, and a place to quarantine for two weeks.” I was overwhelmed with the logistics of getting out of Italy, a country in a state of emergency. I turned every detail from the US side to my family and an ex who had recently walked back into my life. He’d been to visit me in Italy for ski week just as all of this started and knew more than anyone what I was dealing with as I made my escape. 

It’s probably worth mentioning that I still had a job to do throughout this whole ordeal; I was still teaching students in Italy even as I was fleeing the country. Once I landed in Texas, I was teaching from a remote distance of 5,496 miles in the middle of the night when it was daytime there. Part of the agreement for me to be able to return safely home and complete my contract from the US was that I not disclose my location while teaching. The hotel where I stayed during quarantine had a living space, so I taught classes from the sofa. But I had to remember to edit all the American details before going on camera: Angle the camera to get rid of that oversized photo of the Texas Longhorn. Turn on all the lights; it’s daylight in Italy. Cover up the American outlets. Don’t forget to change the time on the laptop screen. It’s 9:00 AM, not 2:00 AM. This middle-of-the-night charade went on for months until the end of June. Some details from my nocturnal American world would become impossible to exclude, fierce Texas thunderstorms and train whistles blowing.

Aside from working 1 AM to 8 AM weeknights, I had some time alone during those two weeks in the hotel. This worked out well because there were a ton of questions to answer. Where would I live? Where would I work? Should I file for unemployment? Is my car still reliable? Reliable enough to commute? Do I have a fever? What happens if I get Covid? Do I have health coverage in the US? Does my Italian bank card work here? How do I get money if it doesn’t? I looked into my insurance coverage and unemployment benefits while staying in the hotel. I found out my Italian health insurance covered everything except Covid. I also found out I was ineligible for unemployment in the US because I had worked abroad. So I could break a leg or get sick with anything other than Covid until I found full-time employment. 

To keep my sanity intact and spirits up in the weeks and months ahead, I focused on another defining characteristic of Phase 2: returning to everything you missed about home. Despite facing a ton of challenges, I was happy to be back in Texas, finding myself blissed out by barbecue and amenities I had lived without, like doing dishes with the help of a dishwasher. There were so many simple things I found to enjoy, even if it would be quite some time before things felt like home again. I set out to experience all of this stuff as much as possible. I decided to stay with my ex-boyfriend in the meantime. We would have a Texas adventure together in the midst of a pandemic.

And so goes this list of fifteen simple things I remember being in awe of upon returning home. 

feet, miles, gallons, pounds, dollars, Fahrenheit, and no more military time – This was an immediate relief upon landing at JFK and a similar joy to finally understanding what everyone was saying. It helps to comprehend basic information when the entire world is shuttered up, hiding from a plague. 

friendliness of strangers – Strangers are friendly throughout the United States, but Texas takes this to another level. I will never tire of being called honey or sweetheart as I pay for a cold drink at some gas station in the middle of nowhere. And if you are checking me in at a hotel after a nail-biting escape across the Atlantic, you can even call me sugar pie. The woman behind the counter at the hotel where I quarantined was one of many quintessential Texas types who greet strangers as if they are desserts. Her daily dose of these sweet terms of endearment helped to take the sting out of the situation. Every morning was something new. What sugary treat will I be today? 

Friendliness isn’t only defined by using the same endearing term with strangers that you do with your family. One could just say “hello” or wave to a stranger on the street to be considered friendly after an American has spent enough time abroad. Once I reacquainted myself with hearing “hello” from strangers again, I started saying it to everyone everywhere, with a big silly grin on my face. My Texas manners were suddenly returning after lying dormant for years: I found myself complimenting a stranger on her neck scarf or striking up a conversation with some random guy about his choice of root beer. I’d be considered a lunatic anywhere else but Texas. 

Wide open spaces – The lockdown in Italy was oppressive. Five words sum up how much we couldn’t leave the house. We couldn’t even leave the house to go outside for a walk. Now, you try that for a few weeks before losing it. Even prisoners get to play basketball. So, going for a walk was the first thing I did after returning home. I walked and walked, day after day, just because I could. It was the most liberating feeling after six weeks locked up in a fourth-floor apartment. I moved in amazement with how my legs carried me forward outside, astonished by the open space all around me. Land and sky seemed to go on forever. I am convinced that Texas has more space than anywhere else on Earth. 

Americans require a certain amount of personal space from others, more so than many cultures worldwide. Truth be told, I prefer the comfortable distance between a handshake compared to kisses on the cheek when meeting someone new. Kisses always confused me greeting people while living abroad. Do I start with the left cheek or right? Are there two or three in this cultural series? American values placed on space can be found in the material world as well. We build spacious homes with measured American distance between neighbors. We drive big cars on freeways that go on forever. We build skyscrapers and fly airplanes up in the space above us. I could go on and on here. 

abundance of AC – AC was a luxury overseas. Most people in the Caribbean sealed off one room, which would be the only cool quarters in the whole house. Moving to Italy, I was looking forward to a country with seasons again and naively thought it would already be cool in Trieste. Alas, it was as hot and sticky as the Caribbean when I arrived, and I quickly learned that my workplace had no AC. I can’t even begin to explain the discomfort. You are one of the lucky few if you are sitting in a cool interior space reading this right now. It’s almost like Americans won the freon lottery at birth.

breakfast – Hotels I visited from Colombia to Croatia would try to cater to American tourists by offering up some parts and pieces of American breakfast on a breakfast buffet. You could always find eggs, toast, jam, or a breakfast potato, but forget about the bacon. Deli meats were served instead, and a few rolled-up slices of ham or turkey just aren’t the same as sizzling strips of bacon. 

One of the first things I remember the weekend after I left quarantine was making breakfast on Saturday morning. Going to the grocery store and walking hand in hand with someone to buy ingredients for making breakfast the next day is something I will never take for granted again. If you can push a grocery cart full of food across a parking lot and head home to make a meal with someone you love, then you’ve got everything you need in this world. 

cereal – Good luck finding cereal outside the United States. If you do, you will pay a fortune. You will not find a box of it at all in Italy. Italians eat cookies for breakfast. And in Aruba, they eat pastechi. These are fried pastries filled with unidentifiable meat. I thought it foolish to recreate my American life abroad; I lived like the locals as much as possible. So it was cookies and pastechi for breakfast for five years. I woke up euphoric for the first few weeks after returning home, knowing I could pour myself a bowl of Cheerios indefinitely.

shopping list – These are products that are impossible to find on grocery store shelves when shopping outside the United States. I would sometimes pack bottles of Cholula inside my luggage after visiting for the holidays, but I lived without the rest of this stuff for much too long. I was over-the-moon delighted to drop these items in the shopping cart once again. 

avocados

Topo Chico

Cholula

salsa and key ingredients for making it

corn products (chips, tortillas, popcorn, etc.)

ranch dressing

Kraft macaroni and cheese

breakfast cereal

American candy

peanut butter

tater tots

graham crackers

cream cheese

Dr. Pepper 

kale

ketchup

books, movies, and music – This will come as no surprise, but it’s really tough to find books in English once you leave the country. Those who prefer reading bound books with paper pages will be at a loss. In this day and age, one would think Americans abroad should be able to find anything they want to watch online, but try to stream an anticipated TV show or classic film on Amazon or Netflix, and you will get the much dreaded this video is not available outside the U.S.  Spotify will quickly become your only source for music because you won’t be able to get tunes in English over the radio except for Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown. 

I landed in the right spot after enduring this kind of famine. Suddenly, here I was, residing with another American, and we shared all the same interests in books, music, and movies. I found myself sheltered in place, knee-deep in books I wanted to read and vinyl records that encompassed the entire history of music. And with one click, a big screen streamed any movie ever made. Quarantine in the United States was so much easier to deal with than in Europe. I synced up records to accompany daily activities. We watched a different film every evening. We read classics aloud before falling asleep. There was so much to choose from besides the one paperback of A Tale of Two Cities that I left behind in my apartment in Italy. 

dryers – I used a line outside in the backyard to dry clothes in the Caribbean. Some may envision an idyllic tropical scene, but hanging laundry to dry outside on an island is no paradise. First, the sun annihilates most fabrics, so clothes will disintegrate between your fingertips after enough cycles. Secondly, timing is everything, and if you don’t get the clothes off the line soon enough, they will be coated in sand or drenched in an intermittent island downpour.

The clothes-drying situation was even more troublesome in Europe. My apartment came with a drying rack that I used for everything, including bed sheets and bath towels. This drying contraption was the centerpiece of the spare bedroom. Reserving that kind of space in your home for drying clothes is not unusual in European apartments. It is considered perfectly acceptable there to drape clothing over furniture and radiators. Even after being back for a year, I am still thankful every time I take a load of laundry from the dryer. The same goes for loading and unloading the dishwasher.

cuisine –  Some types of regional cuisine are impossible to find in other parts of the world. And the food will taste terrible if you do find a restaurant that claims to know something about how to make it. These cuisines include southern comfort food, soul food, fried chicken, barbecue, Tex-Mex, and Mexican. And the only foreign country that can make Mexican food as good as it is made in Texas is Mexico. 

barbecue – Besides indulging in some of my favorite cuisines above during the months after returning home, I had this nostalgic yearning to take in as much Texas culture as possible by rediscovering my Texas heritage via barbecue. We began researching the best the Lone Star State had to offer so as to assimilate some level of normalcy back into our lives. This quest began what we termed the Texas Town Square initiative. We would travel to small towns to sample the award-winning barbecue takeaway. Our first stop was Hutchins BBQ in McKinney. We ordered up ribs and brisket along with all the yummy sides and then found a nearby park to sit down at a picnic table with glass bottles of Dr. Pepper to wash it all down. I was starting to feel like a 5th generation Texan again.

From Jefferson to San Antonio, we’ve discovered that each Texas town square has its peculiar flair, yet they all share some of the same characteristics. Each tells a chapter from Texas history. They all have a courthouse at the center to stroll around. Most have a BBQ joint located on the square. There are always at least one or two antique stores. They also tend to have independent shops with names like Jeans, Jewels, and Jesus Boutique. 

sinks, toilets, and tubs – After being unable to flush paper in the Caribbean and trying to figure out an assortment of apparatus attached to European toilets, I can’t emphasize enough the jubilance an American feels when dealing with a regular toilet and reliable plumbing. Equal elation is experienced when turning on faucets that give you the option of choosing hot water. Even better if that hot water cascades into a bathtub. There are roughly 1825 days in five years. That is 1825 bubble baths that I could have taken and missed out on in life. Having the luxury of taking a bath nowadays feels like staying in a five-star hotel for the rest of your life.

closets – Closets are not a guaranteed feature in many foreign homes. I bought a few rolling racks in the Caribbean and an IKEA wardrobe in Europe. But the walk-in variety we enjoy in the US doesn’t exist elsewhere. Now, my closet is bigger than both bathrooms I had combined in Aruba and Europe. And I am slowly building back a wardrobe after leaving all my clothes in Italy. 

Target – Americans are consumers to the core. Target exemplifies the specific consumer culture that defines us: the markedly convenient one-stop-shop Mega-store type. I went to Target yesterday because we are leaving on a road trip that involves a lot of outdoor adventure through the wilderness of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. I filled the cart with the following items: camping chairs, Igloo cooler, SPF 90 sports sunscreen, dishwashing detergent, cellulose sponges, sports bra, tank tops, socks, underwear, pajamas, makeup remover, shampoo, conditioner, razors, SD card, eggs, English muffins, Prosecco. Americans can’t tackle that type of shopping list efficiently with just one stop anywhere else but home. 

drive-thru – I’m still trying to decide if this belongs in the Stage 2 post over Euphoria or the Stage 3 post over Alienation. The indecision stems from the discovery that chicken seems to dominate all drive-thru businesses in the US these days. Or maybe just Texas? Who knows? Not only that, the amount of cars lined up to order all this chicken far surpasses anything I remember. One line does not suffice anymore, so now drive-thru restaurants have two lines that often snake down the street and block traffic. I’m shocked and confused about how many people eat so much chicken and how long they are willing to wait to get it. But I will save those thoughts for the next post about what it feels like to be an outsider in your country.

reentry shock: disengagement

Leaving Italy during the Pandemic

I had no idea what mental gymnastics I had undergone until 2020 ended, and I paused to reflect on it all. I’d term the experience something besides reentry shock; swapping out the word shock for another, like crash or quake, would work. Let me preface this by disclosing that I am quite happy with how things turned out. But I had no idea that would be the case a year ago.

The reader should know this is a survival story, one meshed with reverse culture shock observations and random general commentary on being human during uncertain times. A story told in four parts. Four parts that I don’t have time to write all at once. So, I will start the first post of this series with stage one: disengagement. 

Psychologists name disengagement as the first stage of the reverse shock trajectory. It is described as a planning phase for leaving the country where you’ve resided abroad. So essentially, you are disengaging from your life in a foreign world while meticulously planning to re-enter your home country. Experts advise scheduling lunch dates to say goodbye to friends and setting aside time to visit your favorite places. Also, inform those at home that you will soon be returning. It’s helpful to know your departure date in advance. A scheduled flight penciled into your calendar months ahead of take-off with ample time to prepare for such a move is usually how it’s done. 

But this was March 2020, and I was residing in Italy, the epicenter of a new mysterious virus spreading like wildfire to the rest of the world after ski week in Europe. I had just 24 hours to flee a country in a state of emergency. A country that had historically served as a portal for the plague, the word quarantine was first used there after all. It was derived from quaranta giorni, meaning forty days. Ships anchored for forty days at Italian ports if they came from infected areas. 

Being locked up in a foreign country at the onset of a world pandemic really is the stuff of nightmares. The walls felt like they were closing in as I lost track of the days. I was deciphering news in Italian as the latest restrictions were being enforced, all while tracking breaking news from the United States. Italian media would report that all restaurants are closed except for pizzerias and gelaterias (Italians know how to prioritize). American headlines would read NBA to suspend season over Coronavirus (The United States was beginning to take this thing seriously). I was a foreigner living in a future world trying to warn everyone back home that a tsunami was headed their way. 

The most distinct memory of what it felt like in Italian lockdown was yearning for home and family. How much we take for granted taking in a smile on the face of someone who truly cares about you. And not on a screen, but right across from you at a table while doing something as simple as eating dinner. Nothing in the world is more important than that. Dinner has since become my new favorite event of the day. 

Apparently, something else I had taken for granted was going outside. More than anything, I wanted to walk outdoors in the beautiful spring weather. I guess taking a walk was something I assumed I would always be able to do in life. Opening windows from the fourth floor of my apartment building was the only relief. And so I would hang my head outside, take in the spring, and listen to the seagulls. Looking across the Italian red tile rooftops, I would think about how Italy may be the worst place to be locked up like this. What a cruel joke? Of all the places in the world? Italy? Really? 

I also remember feeling anxious while writing pages and pages of words in Italian, constantly translating and trying to understand what was and wasn’t allowed with each new day. Government documents and passports were required to leave the house. A new form was required for each trip outside. Specific details of where you were going and what you were doing, along with when, why, and with whom, would need to be updated each time anyone stepped outside. Those without printers at home would have to handwrite pages in Italian for each exit out the front door, which wasn’t often since the only places we were allowed to go were the supermercato, pharmacia, or tabacchi. Food, medicine, and cigarettes are all Italian essentials.  

The sensory experience from those days is still vivid in my memory. Sirens blared day and night—an eerie reminder of ambulances carrying people to hospitals. Police patrolled the streets and broadcasted stern warnings over a loudspeaker to stay inside. My upstairs neighbor snored incessantly. Italians sang traditional songs and played musical instruments on their balconies every night at 5 PM. The delicious aroma of Italian cooking drifted in and out of windows facing the courtyard. Cooking was one of the few joys left in life. I read pages from A Tale of Two Cities. It was a random title I had pulled from a shelf of classics in my classroom; not knowing its words would soon carry my thoughts away from a calamity. My hands became raw and red from hand washing dishes and laundry and an apparent allergy to latex gloves. I’d found a box of 100 gloves under the kitchen sink, and they were the only barrier between me and the virus. The entire country had sold out of hand sanitizer and masks.

I was holding up really well, considering. I would stay in Italy and shelter in place until this bad dream ended. Then, the State Department announced US Suspends Travel from Europe. They warned that all Americans overseas must be prepared to stay indefinitely–shelter in place, my Air Force uncle advised. All international travel was about to come to a sudden Level 4 stop. Level 4 means Do Not Travel. And if you are an American abroad, get out as soon as possible.

The airport in Trieste was already shut down; Venice was the closest airport after that. And only two flights left out of Venice once Covid sank its terrible talons in on that peninsula. One way out was through Germany, and the other was through Rome. The only airport left to land in the United States was JFK. The US Embassy advised Americans to take any flight that was still available, but they also warned that flights would soon cancel without warning and eventually abruptly end all at once. They could not tell us when this would happen or what to do if it did. That was as much help as Americans received after someone finally answered the phone. 

Reentry shock began for me on Thursday, March 19th, as I entered stage one of disengagement. That was the day it became clear I should leave Italy before there was no choice to consider. I couldn’t procrastinate this escape plan a day longer. By Friday, all I could think was I’ve got to get out of here. But how? The whole country was locked up. If I couldn’t even walk across town, how was I going to fly across the Atlantic? 

No plan was hatched yet, but I slowly started packing a suitcase on Saturday morning. I had an entire apartment of things to sort into stuff I would leave behind or things precious and essential enough to pack into the two suitcases I would check at the airport. 

If I had a transcript of just a few seconds inside my head during those last few hours spent frantically packing, it might go like this: Leave the sweaters, jackets, and scarves. Winter is over, and a scorching hot Texas summer is ahead. Make space for the Venetian glassware and Italian linens. Take everything you bought in Europe. You will never be able to replace that stuff. Don’t even think about shoes; you get to keep the Italian boots on your feet. Choose one coat from the rack to wear out the door. And be sure to leave the place tidy and professional because some stranger will soon be sorting through your belongings. Who knows where all this stuff will end up? Leave the work laptop and books. The only thing you can afford to mail is the house key. Don’t forget to take out the trash. 

A friend sent me contact information for a private car service that could get me to the airport for an exorbitant fee. Easy Car confirmed the fee would be 380 Euros, which is about 460 American dollars—It would be the most expensive car ride of my life. The service was worth every penny. After my initial inquiry, the driver promptly reassured me with a soothing text message, “I stay waiting for the details, but the reservation is confirmed.” The reservation was the key I needed to unlock the door out of Italy. It was a crucial piece of the plan. 

Once I secured a ride to the airport, I purchased the airline ticket Saturday evening for a flight that left Marco Polo Venice Airport at 3:15 the next day. The car would pick me up at 11:30 PM, and the estimated airport arrival time was 1:00 PM. The driver also helped me understand what I needed to move through the country. He instructed me to carry confirmation of a purchased plane ticket and a U.S. passport to clear government checks, along with three pages of more government Covid handwritten jargon. There was no turning back now. All I had left to do was summon up my brave Texas lady self.

Easy Car showed up on time the next day. I remember putting on my very first mask inside the car. I asked the driver to stop on the way out of town at an ATM so that I could take out all the Euros in my account. I had no idea if I could access the money in my Italian bank once I crossed the ocean. From there, we ascended on to the autostrada, which was as barren as the Gobi Desert. I said goodbye to Bella Italia and the Adriatic coast between Trieste and Venice. I’d made some of my most cherished memories in these two cities. 

At Venice Marco Polo Airport, a major international airport, I counted five other passengers. They would most likely be the five other passengers on my flight to Rome, one of the last domestic flights in Italy before all internal transportation shut down the next day, including Easy Car.

At check-in, I stood in line forever to pay for my second bag of luggage while a Canadian woman pleaded with the ticket agent about her canceled flight. “The whole country is in a state of emergency,” the Alitalia representative explained to the desperate woman. “There is nothing I can do to help you.” After waiting thirty minutes as the hysterical woman accepted her fate, I stepped up to take my turn and politely asked if I should worry about a flight cancellation once I arrived in Rome.  “Are you American? If so, you should be fine, but I can’t confirm the flight now.” 

The flight to Rome had more crew members than passengers. I would be staying overnight at Leonardo da Vinci Fuimicino Airport, 18 hours between flights. The place was empty except for arriving flights. I remember sitting deliriously for hours, watching passengers file down an aisle flanked by a sea of empty seats, droves of Italians returning home from all over the world. It seemed like all the movie depictions of souls entering the gates of Heaven. I obsessively rounded the corner from where I sat to check the status of departing flights. It wasn’t reassuring. The status for most flights updated cancellato every 30 minutes. 

New York,  CANCELLATO

Dusseldorf,

Hamburg,

Delhi, CANCELLATO

Brussels, CANCELLATO

Alghero,  CANCELLATO

São Paulo, CANCELLATO

Addis Ababa,

Zurich,

Eventually, I became so heavy-lidded that I couldn’t stay awake. I decided to pass through immigration around midnight to a distant international airport wing where I found reclining seats to catch some shut-eye. My teeth were chattering from the cold, so I pulled my coat over my head to keep warm and tried to get some rest. All night long, every 10 minutes or so, an announcement was made in Italian, followed by another in English, incessantly warning everyone of the deadly virus. Ricordiamo a tutti passeggeri di rispettare la distanza di un metro tra loro. We remind all passengers to please respect the distance of one meter between each other. Hadn’t everyone gotten that memo by now? 

I slept off and on for 2-3 hours. At one point in the middle of the night, mentally drained and delirious, I looked out the window onto the empty tarmac. There was nothing to see except the silhouette of pavement against the dark night sky. I made a deal with the great maker of all Earthly beauty and madness alike. Please help me get home safely, and I will not disappoint you with a life of sloth and gluttony. I will put my family first and work in the service of others until the end of my time here on this planet. 

Early that morning, every half hour or so, I would walk miles and miles down this hinterland corridor of endless empty gates and look for signs of life at the central hub. This was Rome. This was the grandest destination on Earth. And there was no one anywhere in sight. I know it was nighttime, but there were no hotels open in the city for overnight passengers to stay. The airport was chillingly empty as if the world had ended. My mind began to play tricks on me. Maybe the world had ended. Around 7 AM, I found a solitary airline employee taking his post at luggage check. My prayers had been answered. If this guy showed up to work, there must still be passengers boarding planes operating out of here somewhere. 

After spending the early morning hours pacing up and down within this terrifying time gap on the sticks of human civilization, I finally ventured out far enough after 8 AM to find coffee for sale and sat to have my last mediocre cup of it in Italy while keeping watch over the flight board, still anxiously waiting for flight AZ 608 from FCO to JFK at 10:25 to post On Time. My passport was useless without those two words. And then I glanced up again as I had done a million times already and, in the blink of an eye, ON TIME lit up next to New York City in glorious green means go letters.

On time means I’m going home. I’m going home. I can’t believe I’m going home. The words illuminated a marquee in my mind until the emotions behind it fully enveloped me like a blanket wrapped around my soul. It felt like I’d been pulled from a shoddy barge drifting in the darkness at sea for weeks and weeks in a monster storm, navigating a cataclysm of virus-laden respiratory raindrops.

It was then that I had my first glimpse into the second stage of reentry shock. Euphoria really is the only word to describe it. Even more so considering the circumstances. I’d be landing in New York City soon. I’d see the Statue of Liberty as the plane descended and placed me safely within the borders of my glorious country. Lady Liberty would be there to welcome me to Euphoria. I’d never been so happy to be going home.  

kurentovanje, carnival, and quarantine

East of Italy, in a town no one has ever heard of, a clamorous procession of men dressed as benevolent sheep monsters chase away the bitter cold of winter each year. The town is called Ptuj (pronounced p-too-ee) and is the oldest settlement in Slovenia. We were there on Shrove Sunday, taking in all the sights and sounds surrounding kurentovanje, a festival named for the kurenti. The kurent is a pagan creature whose origins stretch back before the Roman town of Poetovio was established, from whence the funny name Ptuj originated. How does one even begin to describe kurentovanje? Or the colossal kurenti?  It’s kind of like Mardi Gras with monsters.

The kurent looks a lot like an abominable snowman that was orphaned in a Slavic steer stockade. As a result of growing up amongst bovine creatures, the young yeti developed mannerisms and movements similar to those of his adopted family, especially the dominant bull of the herd. Imagine thousands of these shaggy beasts, mammoth and mischievous, clad head to toe in sheepskin. Each has a unique terrifying mask tailor-made, I presume, in some kind of an off-the-beaten-path Slovenian workshop of master craftsmen who specialize in this sort of thing. Either horns or antlers –selectively chosen as a headdress for their exaggerated traits of masculinity, I suppose–jut high above the monster’s head to make him appear like a towering supernatural entity walking amongst mere human beings. During kurentovanje, which is a week-long celebration that ends with a grande Carnival parade, thousands of kurenti stampede their way down the narrow streets of this Medieval town, sporadically pausing to stagger from side to side before firmly planting themselves in front of an adoring audience to perform an oafish twist and shake and touch the hands of exuberant fans.

Watch out as well because the friendly beast–who, before modern times, could only be impersonated by an unmarried man–is on the lookout for a mate. So, without notice, the kurent, will charge after a young maiden standing in the crowd of spectators, aggressively beseeching the lady to turn over a colorful handkerchief so he can add it to his collection, the entire collection tied around a big stick tucked underneath his armpit, the Kurent’s version of a little black book. I even witnessed a kurent forcefully grab a woman from the crowd and carry her off upside down. All of this is an ancient courtship ritual reenacted for our amusement in a swipe-right modern society.

Even though each current has his own special one-of-a-kind appearance, all of these creatures accessorize their sheep suits similarly. Each carries a weapon made from hedgehog spines, I can’t even begin to explain. Dangling from the waist of every kurneti are four colossal cowbells that clang a cacophony of never-ending jarring head-splitting noise. For the kurenti who have chosen to accessorize with antlers of sorts, colorful ribbons are threaded through and shimmer in the sunlight, delicately framing the head of the beast.

The kurentovanje has been added to the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. A list of 549 experiences connected to 127 countries. Lonely Planet has also named it one of the top ten Carnival experiences in the world after Venice. Carnival began on San Marco Square in the “Floating City” almost a thousand years ago. From there, this one-of-a-kind celebration spread to the rest of Europe and countless other places across Latin America and the Caribbean. And also, of course, to New Orleans, which may be one of the few rare gems of a city capable of pulling off a Carnival celebration in the United States. However, Venetian city officials first declared Carnival a holiday and put it on the calendar. So it makes sense that Venice often takes the number one spot as the best Carnival celebration in the world.

Just forty-eight hours in Venice was all I needed to become forever enchanted, transformed by Carnival season into a sublime state. I knew what this city was capable of; I’d experienced its charm many times before. I’d been down these roads between piazzas on several occasions. I had walked over deserted bridges to turn the corner and become entirely enraptured by deserted alleyways a few weeks out from under the waters of acqua alta. I sat in San Marco Square in the sweltering sun shortly after arriving to live in Italy, staring in astonishment at the glistening Gothic cathedral. How does one build a cathedral that glistens for a thousand years? I was here long ago, before the Internet was invented, stepping off the train in my twenties onto a platform, one of many stops traipsing across Europe, completely and totally unaware of the magic I was about to experience when I walked outside the train station. I tried to capture the magic inside an old Pentax camera, storing it away to develop in a darkroom before digital photography came along. But this visit was different. This time I fell madly in love with the city.

Carnival in Venice could easily take position number one as my favorite travel experience ever. If I had to choose such a thing. Nothing can compare to it except maybe living out the scenes of a dream that becomes reality. Imagine getting lost along winding streets where moonlight is reflected in the water alongside and then crossing a bridge to find lustrous characters with ceramic masks cloaked in silk brocade and velvet. Part of a whole cast of characters that seem to have leaped from the pages of a book long ago to meander the city streets until Ash Wednesday strikes, when they are shut back between the pages for another year. Carnival in Venice isn’t merely a parade but a state of spirit that completely envelops the city, yet capturing all of the Carnival essentials.

So, what are the Carnival essentials? What makes Carnival, Carnival? To begin, daily societal norms are expelled, and social roles are completely reversed. People can break the rules and misbehave. And they wear elaborate disguises to get away with it. If a culture does Carnival right, everyone is dressed like a star about to step under the spotlight center stage. Lavish feasting and drinking ensue. The ingredients devoured differ from region to region. Rum punch is in hand under the hot Caribbean sun, a place where I gained most of my Carnival-going experience. And I’m sure some jerk goat or roasted pig is up for grabs somewhere on the island. A plethora of fried dough is consumed during the Carnival season here in the Old World. The chiacchiere are popular in Italy, which are fried dough strips that are as crispy as a taco shell and coated with powdered sugar. After our trip, I read that we were supposed to consume a lot of doughnuts during Kurentovanje. It’s been my experience that the only thing you can ever find to eat during festivals in Slovenia is a sausage on a stick.

Thinking back on it, I remember taking a donut somewhere along the way while standing and shivering shoulder to shoulder at the parade that afternoon in Ptuj. I think they call it a krofi. I took a bite of a krofi paired with mulled wine to keep warm. Around that time, I noticed the messages coming in like a tsunami while I was trying to snap a photo of the kurenti with my phone. What is happening? Something is happening? I could have never imagined it would come to this.

We have been on total lockdown for one week now. The whole country of Italy is under quarantine. One of the most gregarious cultures on the planet is locked up. Sixty million people are stuck at home. How does this happen? How can you go from celebrating Carnaval in “The Floating City” a few weeks before being locked away for who knows how long? Terrified of a monster you cannot see. On the fourth floor inside some strange apartment with only windows to enjoy the outdoors.

I wish the kurent would come to carry me away, carry me back home to Texas, and drive off the cold and cough of this virus for good.

christmas cookies and Dutch bicycles

I visited Amsterdam weeks ago over fall break, which happens around Halloween here in Italy. After living on a Dutch island for four years, Amsterdam is as close as I can get to something that feels like home in the Old World. The Netherlands seems more familiar to me at this point than Italy. Close proximity to the Dutch from the city of Trieste was one of the reasons I agreed to sign up for a European stint. I might be half a world away from home and a full day ahead in a different time zone, but I’m only a two-hour flight from all things Dutch. 

I felt this strange familiarity with a culture that was not my own before I landed in Amsterdam, a city I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. This comforting feeling of arriving “home” after being so far away began at the gate while waiting for my connecting flight in Munich. Another passenger at the gate was sprawled out flat on his back across several seats with his boots kicked off to the side in the middle of the aisle, and he was chatting away forever on his cell phone. What language is that? Then it hit me. He’s speaking Papiamento. It was music to my ears. Oh, how I missed that familiar Aruban tongue. 

It wasn’t just the sun and the sea that I missed. I was longing, as well, for Dutch culture. I wanted to hear familiar voices speaking Nederlands. I wanted savory pancakes for breakfast and maybe even for dinner. I craved war fries doused with an unidentifiable sauce and blasted with the shrapnel of chopped onions. I was looking forward to snacking on bitterballen and kroketten, or deep-fried balls and tubes filled with mystery meat ragout for all the non-Dutch reading this.

Arriving after midnight at Isabel’s newly remodeled city flat, I collapsed onto a chair and quickly took notice of a dainty bowl filled to the brim with kruidnoten. The kruidnoten were strategically placed next to a bottle of champagne. Not to be confused with pepernoten, kruidnoten are chocolate-covered cookie nuggets made from the same ingredients as speculaas. Baking speculaas involves a distinct seasonal mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and white pepper. These specifics in Dutch Christmas cookies mean nothing to most people unless they happen to hail from the lowlands of windmills and tulips.

“Kruidnoten,” I exclaimed while plucking one of the shiny pellets that have a similar appearance to woodland animal turds scattered along a hiking trail. Then we sat to pop open the bottle of champagne and toast my arrival. “Sinterklaas is here,” Isabel exclaimed. 

It goes without saying that I love all things Dutch. I love Sinterklaas and stroopwafel. I love dairy products and every color of the rainbow in tulips. I love not being the tallest woman in a crowd and hagelslag sprinkled over buttered bread for breakfast. I love windmills and wooden shoes. I’ve even grown to appreciate the color orange and Dutch directness. Maybe orange isn’t just for Halloween. And it can be liberating to tell someone how you really feel.

Living in Aruba was like a course in Dutch 101. I say that because it was a mere introduction, and nothing could compare to the total immersion I was about to experience. Clearly, Amsterdam is a world away from the Dutch Caribbean. Undoubtedly so, they don’t even ride bikes on the island. I’m sure they would if they could, but they can’t due to the humidity, heat, and roaming packs of wild dogs. Every once in a while, a new arrival could be spotted along the side of the dirt roads in Aruba, a tall tow-headed, lanky person pedaling and panting, drenched in sweat with a pack of barking hounds on the heel. Traveling to the homeland from where it all commenced was definitely graduating to an advanced placement status in obtaining a deeper cultural understanding.

Any program in understanding Dutch culture has to begin with bicycles. The thing about the Dutch and their bicycles is this: It’s one thing to see thousands of bicycles chained up at Amsterdam’s Grand Central Station. And it’s another thing entirely to live out the daily routine of this madness amongst the locals.

One learns a few things quickly when experiencing this cultural phenomenon up close. First, cycling is just a mode of transportation in this country. There is nothing more to it than that. The Dutch are incredibly pragmatic about the whole thing. They are not trying to impress anyone with these bicycles. They ride around on dilapidated, gearless, rusted-out wrecks all over the city, to and from every event from a mind-boggling list of daily activities, each activity penned in on a meticulously detailed hour-by-hour agenda.

They also don’t seem to have many safety measures, including protective gear—most importantly, a helmet to shield the fragile human brain. As far as I could see, bike helmets are not worn by anyone. The Dutch trust the safety of their cycling conventions and the cycling infrastructure of their cities, I suppose. There are designated bike paths everywhere. “Bicycles are the king of the road here,” were Isabel’s words of parting advice as I ventured out as a pedestrian on my first day to explore the city. 

They also do not let inclement weather deter them from getting where they need to be. It’s not even up for discussion. In drizzle or downpour, they are whizzing all around the city from one place to another along their designated red brick paths. In sleet or snow, they are bundled up in hats and mittens, buzzing by while ding and dinging their little bells, “yelling” at pedestrians to get off their designated red brick paths.

The cargo the Dutch tote and the activities they partake in while riding are unheard of in every other part of the planet. Spectators would pay money to watch these inconceivable acts on display, perhaps circling around and around inside the center ring of a traveling circus. Sword-swallowing daredevils and flying trapeze artists have nothing on the Dutch riding their bicycles. 

It isn’t unusual in this wonderful, strange world to see a couple cycling together hand in hand with a few kids propped up on fenders and handlebars and maybe toting a baby in a barrow. They could also carry a week’s worth of groceries and a lamp they purchased for the house. And they would simultaneously be screwing in the lightbulb to the new lamp while making an artisan sandwich with fresh ingredients from their grocery list. Basically, anything they would normally and casually be doing at home is something they can feasibly do while riding a bike. And they have this whole laid-back demeanor while doing it, making it all look deceptively easy.

It is clearly not easy if you are a foreigner in this land. Bikes are a rite of passage for Dutch kids. Ten-year-old kids take a bicycle test—much like our driving test—to roam free on their own wheels all over the city. One should develop a certain amount of experience and skill before jumping on board with the experts. 

Isabel, however, wouldn’t let me visit Amsterdam without riding a bicycle. This was my Dutch immersion program. “My sister brought a bicycle over for you,” she informed me days before my scheduled departure. And so, on a cold, drizzly day, I embarked upon my most authentic Dutch experience to date. Without any inspection of the contraption, I climbed aboard—helmetless and head injury exposed—some heap that looked like something my grandmother might have ridden in 1937. The next thing I knew, I was whirling down the slick city streets. 

“How do you stop this thing?” I asked as I was already rolling down the pavement. 

“Go back on the brake,” she instructed.

“Go back on the brake? I haven’t done that since I was eight years old.” I told her while pushing my foot backward on the pedal. I never did pick up much speed on that thing. 

We were headed to the Cobra Museum of Modern Art. We were not riding our bikes all the way there, rather it was just one leg on a convoluted commute that involved cycling, catching a train, and then taking a bus. It gave me a feel for what it is like to move around the city the way the Dutch do. But I chickened out when it came to our next museum event on wheels, which would involve thousands of Dutch racing along the city streets for Museum Night. I hadn’t graduated to that level yet. 

Museum Night is held once a year. Fifty museums throughout the city stay open until 2 AM, and access is available to all of them with a simple wristband. Not only do museums stay open until 2 AM, but they also serve food and drinks, along with DJs and music. So it is a party at every museum in town. And the Dutch keep the party going on their bicycles while racing from one museum to another, flying down the streets toting friends on fenders and handlebars, friends who are drinking and texting as if they were sitting on a bar stool at a bar. 

The second most important lesson after bicycles in Dutch culture is gezellig. It’s a word without a direct English translation. From what I have gathered, it is a feeling more than a word. And I also think it could be a person, place, or thing that evokes the feeling. But who knows? I could be way off on all marks. All I know is that everything is evaluated according to whether it is gezellig or not. And the Dutch try to schedule as much gezellig into their lives as possible. So if you are traveling to visit someone who is authentically Dutch, plan to attend one gezellig event after the other. If you attend enough of these, then you begin to kind of understand the word even though you can’t spell it or define it, and you certainly will never be able to pronounce it because it takes making some kind of clearing your throat guttural sound that can only be made by people who share Dutch DNA. 

My most gezellig night in Amsterdam was spent in a town outside the city, Amersfoort. Amersfoort is Isabel’s childhood hometown, and her parents invited us for dinner. “What is your mom serving for dinner?” I asked on the train ride over to Amersfoort. I followed the question up with an answer, Stamppot. We both started laughing when she answered yes. How could it be anything else? I’ve learned enough about Dutch cuisine to know that boiled and mashed foods make up most of the culinary options for family dinners. Some of these dishes involve sauerkraut and cabbage, which would have been a totally different experience from my point of view and not gezellig whatsoever. Thankfully, andijviestamppot was on the menu that evening, mashed potatoes mixed with endives and served with a side of sausage. 

To fully understand gezellig, one must consider many factors. Climate is important. It was cold and grey outside, and we took refuge from the chill inside this warm, charming house that was 500 years old. Serving spirits is also a must. We sat down to visit before dinner over a bottle of wine that had been specially selected and brought upstairs from the cellar. There was a cheese board being passed from person to person. Any cheese served in the Netherlands instantly creates gezellig. Company is definitely a factor; I don’t think you can do gezellig alone. And the planning and preparing of meals, as well, is an essential factor in developing gezelligheid. We enjoyed a delicious meal and ended the evening in the living room with coffee and pepernoten. Pepernoten, I was told, are more traditional than kruidnoten. These old-fashioned cookies are made with anise and honey. There is always something new to learn about Dutch Christmas traditions. 

Christmas is in a couple of days. The fact that I am just finishing this post about a trip I took over Halloween with only a few days remaining in December clearly indicates how busy Italy is keeping me. I guess I will get around to writing about all the Christmas markets I visited by Valentine’s Day. 

10 proofs Italy edition

10 simple proofs that I have been transported to a magical place:

1. Zampoli Gelateria is around the corner from my apartment. The locals say it is some of the best gelato in Italy. And one scoop, or una pallina, costs only 1.40 Euros. The place has nearly one hundred flavors, and I am on a mission to taste every one.

2. The windows in my apartment ascend forever up to the top of a towering ceiling. I keep these windows open all day and all of the night. As a result, I wake up most mornings to the sound of seagulls. On Sundays, I wake up to the sound of church bells. 

3. Makeshift tents are set up all over the city center this time of year, think Oktoberfest meets the State Fair of Texas every weekend. Vendors at these booths sell all kinds of stuff, including unidentifiable pastries, like kurtoskalacs. What is a kurtoskalac one might ask? Well, after a quick Google search, it turns out to be a spit cake from Transylvania. I have no idea what this means exactly. I’m still unsure what it is, even after scrutinizing its creation process by watching a man turn one of these oblong pastries around and around on some kind of skewer over burning charcoal. It’s kind of like a cake being barbequed. 

4. Art performances can also be found at every turn of the corner. A solo ballerina performs a pirouette and pas de bourree on pointe in the middle of Piazza del Borsa. Turn another corner to find an acapella singing ensemble. Down another block is an orchestra quintet. It’s like everyone in the city with talent just walks out of their house on the weekends—tutu or violin in tote—and goes to the nearest piazza to perform. 

5. One of the best performances I have seen so far involved a late evening trek up a hilltop where “I Walk the Line” echoed down from the castle on top. There is something about the juxtaposition of Johnny Cash with European castles that is the most magical thing of all. 

6. Free food is served with flutes of bubbly at apertivo every day. Think happy hour with a tasty morsel to nibble. Not the beer with peanuts variety, but prosecco or Aperol Spritz with mini sandwiches. 

7. It takes 30 minutes to cross the border into neighboring countries like Slovenia and Croatia.

8. Trieste is the city of coffee. It has a long history as one of the largest Mediterranean ports in this lucrative trade. The price of coffee is government-regulated to never cost more than 1.20 Euros. That is if you enjoy your coffee standing at the bar. But Triestians also linger with a cup of coffee at the many cafes, the most famous being Caffe San Marco where the literary likes of James Joyce and Umberto Saba once gathered. There is even a University of Coffee here where coffee enthusiasts can obtain a Master’s Degree in Coffee Economics and Science. 

9. Several Sundays ago, I watched from the lighthouse vantage point as some 2,000 sailboats raced together with 20,000 sailors. A spectacular sight that I will remember forever. 

10. There is a train station precisely one block from my apartment. Trains depart from this magical portal to destinations all over Europe. Today I board a train for Amsterdam. 

from Tanki Flip to Trieste

I landed in Italy over a month ago. Where do I begin? So much has happened since I last posted. Tanki Flip seemed to be in the rearview mirror, looking ahead to a new adventure in Europe, so I admit to being woefully out of practice with words. Writing should be a habit like everything else in life, or it’s just not there when you go back to it, and then you have to put in the extra effort to find that place where it feels normal again. Alas, I lost good material at the end of my time in Aruba because I didn’t write about it, especially dealing with the island’s healthcare system. Crossing the finish line on the island was a madcap montage of medical mishaps mixed with a mountain of paperwork. 

Aruba loves a bureaucratic chase, which meant I was behind the wheel, racing from one government office to the next in order to close up shop on life there. There were four years of tax forms in Dutch to finalize and a car to sell and a house to empty and utilities to shut off and boxes to ship and money to transfer and coconut trees to trim. The last two weeks were spent stirring up dust speeding down dirt roads in an island-weathered Hyundai Tucson, which also had a radiator leak, meaning frequent stops along the side of the street to add coolant each time the engine overheated. 

As if there weren’t enough items to check off the list of things to do to leave Aruba, I had the added challenge of initiating all the paperwork needed to live in Italy eventually. And I wasn’t getting to Italy without a good conduct report in hand, which is a piece of paper issued by law enforcement to assure the country where you will soon be living that you didn’t misbehave in the country where you currently reside. Two weeks after expediting the process and two business days before my flight left Aruba, it felt like a miracle as the glorious good conduct report was being passed from the clerk’s hand to mine at the Ministerio Publico in Aruba when the clerk abruptly asked, “You know what the process is from here, right?” 

“No, I thought this was it. I don’t have time for the next step. My plane leaves on Tuesday,” I answered. 

“You have to go to the main post office to get a 2.50 Florin stamp and then take this paper along with the stamp to the blue building next to Ling and Son. There you will get the Apostille. You have to get it there today because it will take them 24 hours to process it. They close at 3:30 PM. I don’t know if you can make it with all the roadwork and traffic.” 

It’s almost like they want you to fail. 

Meanwhile, between racing down the streets collecting stamps, I was penciling in doctor’s appointments and taking advantage of socialized medical care. Living on a Dutch island has perks. Imagine going to the doctor and only being asked for your first and last name. That’s it. No one asks for proof of insurance, or money, or identification, or money. Your name is in the system. Then, imagine the same when you go to the pharmacy to pick up your prescription. It’s all free! 

I made use of all this free healthcare to run routine exams and blood work and such so as to make sure I had the health and vitality to cross the pond for another adventure. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to afford routine wellness care in the States over the summer, although there are some snags when it comes to medical care on an island. Resources are limited, machines malfunction, and sometimes doctor practices are questionable. 

Back in Texas, in time to see fireworks with my family on July 4th, I was due in Houston to meet the Consolalto Generale to apply for an Italian work visa the following week. I took the bus to Houston Thursday night, arriving well after midnight because of traffic that had us at a standstill and bumper-to-bumper on Interstate 45 for two hours. Stepping off the bus, a bit haggard and dazed, I found that I hadn’t landed on the safest downtown city block. After we disembarked, my fellow bus passengers left me all alone, quickly zooming off in all directions inside cars driven by loved ones who had come to carry them safely away from skid row. To be honest, I’d never felt more alone and out of place, and I was clearly standing on a city street in a state that I call home, only my home includes guns and drugs and desperate people willing to use one to get the other. 

“Where are the taxis?” I hopelessly asked the lady standing next to me on a dark and empty street. 

“Taxi, what do you mean, taxi?” The woman replied in disbelief as if I had asked where one might find a stagecoach. “Nobody takes a taxi anymore.” “Everybody take Uber or Lift.” 

These are the consequences of living on an island. You are an alien when you return to civilization. People treat you like one because—clueless that transportation has been transformed in these modern times—stupid questions like this come out of your mouth. 

And how does this kind of change happen in just four years? The yellow cab has been around my entire life. I did have the Uber app on my phone, and I’d even used it twice before: Once when there was a torrential downpour in Dallas that plagued me with doubt about driving myself to a dinner out with friends. Another time, when I was staying with friends in Atlanta, I was certainly not going to ask them to take me to the airport in the middle of the night on a Sunday so that I could catch a 6 AM flight back to Aruba. Outside of those two episodes, there just wasn’t a need for an app that delivered on-demand ride service when one lives on an island in the Caribbean.

Knowing I had to act quickly, I tracked down the only Megabus man around. “Could you help me?” I pleaded. “I don’t live in the United States, and my phone isn’t working,” I rambled on about Setar and Aruba phone service and details that meant nothing to this guy. He looked at me with an expression that asked what the hell do you want from me, lady? I cut straight to the chase. “I need Uber fast!” I struck a deal. “I will give you 20 bucks if you set me up with a car on Uber right now.” 

“Yeah, I don’t know why the bus drops all these girls here in the middle of the night. This isn’t the safest part of town,” he added while opening the app. 

My Uber driver was exceptionally chatty. A much different character than the morose man who dropped me at the bus station the next day, along with parting words of advice to never trust anyone. After a historical midnight tour of Houston, she drove me to the Marriott, where I checked in and took the elevator to the 14th floor to sleep 4 hours in Marriott’s most expensive hotel suite, the last room available. Four hours later, my alarm went off, and I was sifting through some twenty pieces of paperwork I needed to get the visa, most of it written in Italian and organized by sticky notes for translation purposes so that I could pull this thing off when the lady behind the counter would undoubtedly demand each piece of paper in rapid succession. 

I didn’t have an actual appointment at the Italian Consulate; rather, I was on standby, meaning I could talk to a clerk if there was time after sitting in the waiting area listening to every other appointment that morning as they filed across the row of plexiglass windows. All I could hope for was a no-show or a last-minute cancellation. This place was not messing around. If you did not dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s, you were out the door and not coming back anytime soon since they were booked through September. I watched college students burst into tears when they realized their dream of studying abroad wasn’t happening because they forgot a postage stamp or didn’t bring the exact change. I chatted with a couple who worked for HGTV and were hoping for a visa to complete a six-month television project. They had flown in on Southwest from Dallas that morning after taking a time slot as the result of a cancellation. I eavesdropped as they professed their love of Italy and carried forward with a convincing case during their scheduled appointment; their renovation of the Italian villa would still only be a dream. I don’t know how I walked out of that place with an application in process status, but afterward, I made my way directly to the nearest watering hole, Whole Foods, and ordered a fancy flute of prosecco. 

My fondest memory of arriving in Italy involved Johnny Cash since there was a tribute to him the week I arrived in Trieste. I climbed to the top of a hill on one of the first evenings living in this place to watch it at Castello di San Guisto. Everything was Italian until I heard, “Hello, I am Johnny Cash.” Somehow, the 5,496 miles I just traveled disappeared because Johnny Cash feels about as close to home as I can get in Italy.

Trieste is on the border between Slovenia and the Adriatic Sea. Aside from that evening on the castle hilltop, it is clear that I am farther away from home than ever. Isabel arrived in Trieste from Sicily on the day I moved here, and I was lucky to see a familiar face after landing to live in a place I had never visited. We traveled to Ljubljana the first weekend in Italy, which felt like discovering a hidden gem. The next weekend, we traveled by ferry to Rovinj, Croatia. Another gem. The weekend after that, I went to Venice with friends from work. And the weekend after that, I went to a food festival in Udine. 

Aside from the travel, food and culture in Italy make life beautiful. The greatest thing about living here so far is that you can buy choice culinary experiences with pocket change. The best gelato on the planet will only cost you 1.20 €. The pizza is delicious and around 2.20 € a slice. This is the region where prosecco originated, and people drink it every day after work as part of the aperitivo tradition. Trieste is also known as the city of coffee. Strong coffee is served in a shot glass on every corner, and the price is government-regulated, never to be more than 1.20 €, but only if you stand huddled with the rest of the crowd around the bar to drink it. There is even a college of coffee here. 

But, of course, it’s not all pizza and gelato. I am living in the Old World. Life is different from home or even Aruba. It’s an adjustment. I make coffee in the morning the Italian way, which involves a gas burner and a Bialetti, producing only one very strong cup of coffee. I’m not qualified to operate European appliances, and I go to battle every weekend with these beasties. The washing machine is a little demon. It gyrates and grunts and moves across the bathroom tile. The refrigerator dies and kicks back up tenaciously the next morning, freezing all the food that spoiled the night before. There are 88 stairs to ascend and descend in and out the front door of my apartment. My commute involves a two-mile walk and round trip bus ride every day, which will be something fierce once winter arrives, especially once the wind blows into town. 

There is something here in Trieste called the Bora. It’s this forceful, piercing wind that just about knocks innocent people over while walking down the street. Well, actually it does knock people over, and there are ropes and rails strategically placed all over the city so that people can protect themselves from such calamity when the Bora gusts between buildings. The locals speak of it as if it is supernatural, a blast of something mythical that moves through you and sparks the life force within, producing a bone-rattling chill to tell you that you are alive today and remind you to be thankful for all of it because someday, eventually, you will only be bones. 

It is October again. I can feel the Bora on its way. I turn 47 tomorrow. I think I made it to Italy just in time.

Cartagena: solo travel this sensory adventure

Cartagena is a dizzying Caribbean kaleidoscope of vibrant culture and history that will fully awaken all senses. First of all, the Old City of Cartagena is a Unesco World Heritage site, so the experts have already deemed it a place of significance, where you might want to become fully present and keenly aware of it all. It is a mythic port city of treasures, pirates, and pillage. As a result, it is entirely enclosed by a wall constructed after Sir Francis Drake attacked in 1586; the wall was the final straw after the Spanish endured too many pirate licks by many other miscreants before Drake. In addition to its historical clout as a premier destination in the big wide world, it’s also easy to make your way around inside the walled Old City of Cartagena. Traveling alone and being a bit directionally challenged, a girl can get completely lost walking the maze of sidewalks and streets without worries since you are fully protected in every direction by fortified ruins. The only danger is the gaping holes along the sidewalk every other block or so.

It’s a good idea to glance down to the ground from time to time to prevent falling inside these sidewalks, but be sure to look up and around so as to soak up the scenery. And be ready to engage all five senses as you do. The Cartagena sensory experience begins with color. Walk just one block, and every house along the way is painted a different hue, like eggs in an Easter basket, which is the imagery that comes to mind since I landed in Colombia on Good Friday. After your eyeballs transmit a basket of light waves, get ready for even more color from above because all the balconies have climbing bougainvillea blooming delicate pastel paperlike flowers. And crisscrossing from one rooftop to another, a bright canopy of festive flags flap wildly in the sky, as if there is a birthday party every day on every block in this city. Another street is strewn with upside-down iridescent umbrellas. Another with colorful bottles. It seems the possibilities are endless when it comes to reflecting light and color with random objects suspended high above all over the city.

And that is just what you will see. The rest of your senses will kick in shortly after sight. Smell the aroma of Colombian coffee along with smoked chorizo and exhaust fumes, fruit juices and horse manure, cigar smoke and caramel and coconut candies. Listen late at night in the eerie space of another time to the faint clip-clop of horseshoes coming down the street as they gradually become louder and louder before a carriage dashes within inches in front of you. Or wake up on your morning stroll to an echo as street vendors sing their songs of fruit for sale from nature’s colorful bounty toppling over their old rickety carts. Buy something tropical that you cannot altogether identify to ignite new taste buds. Stop later for some street food at lunchtime, where the local crowds are gathered, and order the plate-sized triple-fried plantain served with a spongy slab of salty fermented curd. Take a break from the sweltering humidity and heat and relax on a bench in a shady spot at one of the many plazas. Aggressive vendors will approach you within minutes, invade your personal space, and deliver a tactile sales pitch. Before you know it, several bracelets will be strung over your wrist. Another vendor will then apply a mess of lotion to your bare skin dispensed from a condiment bottle stored inside her shirt. Seconds later, she will begin vigorously massaging your calf before you can process what is happening and tell her, “No, no quiero un masaje, gracias.”

Welcome to Cartagena! Your senses are now supercharged. So much so that you question if this is all reality or illusion? Is it no wonder that magical realism was born in this country? Gabriel García Márquez did not have to conjure up all the ideas for his stories using only his imagination. He probably just sat on a park bench and noted what was around him.

Rest at ease knowing you can take a reprieve from this sensory overload by stepping inside one of the many cathedrals, which seem to be at every turn of the corner here. Then be prepared to be transported in your mind to Cartagena’s past, a labyrinth in epic proportion narrative. Sitting inside this grandiose tranquil space, the traces of Cartagena’s history—very much alive today and swarming the city streets outside—spin about in your imagination as if you were rotating through images on the reel of a vintage View-Master.

In one slide, palenqueras in multicolored traditional dresses balance a bowl of tropical fruit on top of their heads. These women are descendants of the people of San Basilio de Palenque, a city established by runaway slaves and the very first free town in the Americas. The women of Palenque went to work shortly after its liberation, made use of its natural resources, and made their living by carrying fruit into town to sell. They still sell the fruit, but they may also pose for a picture these days since their semblance has become an iconic stamp of sorts to symbolize the city of Cartagena.

In another slide, The Kogi, an indigenous group who live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, are huddled together barefoot on the bustling city streets. Men, women, and children are dressed exactly alike, head to toe, in traditional white linen juxtaposed against their long straight raven locks. The only thing to convince you that you haven’t traveled to another period in history is the cell phone they hold in their hand as they sell their basket wares. Their ancient ancestors, the Tayrona, made intricate works in gold, and the lure of gold brought the Spanish here to this very site, where they created a portal in and out of a new world. Galleons of gold and silver were shipped out in one direction, and millions of African slaves were shipped through in another.

The exquisite Colonial buildings also tell a story. They were built with the wealth that the Spanish acquired as a result of all that passed through this portal city. The Palace of the Inquisition is one of the most beautiful buildings in the entire city, but this palatial marvel of Baroque architecture houses a grim history of torture. Anyone suspected of heresy or witchcraft throughout all of the islands in the Caribbean would have been brought here by boat to confess their sins. A film playing on a continuous loop tells the true tale to museum-goers of a Haitian woman who used her traditional knowledge of medicinal herbs and magic to help a Spanish aristocratic fend off the desires of a cheating husband and was brought to Cartagena to confess her sins to the inquisitors when the remedy did not work.

Another building, San Pedro Iglesia, is dedicated to San Pedro Claver, the patron saint of slaves and seafarers. He was a Jesuit priest who dedicated his life to trying to alleviate the suffering of all the slaves who entered Cartagena. He boarded each slave ship as it arrived at the port to administer medicine to those who had survived the journey.  He would then carry a tote bag of provisions—filled with foods, fruits, medicines, brandy, and tobacco—to slave auctions and hand these small items of comfort out to the slaves to ease their pain. When there were no slave ships in Cartagena, he traveled to the plantations to continue his mission, where he lived amongst the slaves, even sleeping at night in the slave quarters.

In between these buildings with tales to tell are scenic plazas canopied by tropical trees and plants. The most verdant and famous of the plazas in the “Jewel of the Indies” is the Plaza de Bolívar. Simón Bolívar, El Libertador, is placed gallantly astride an enormous horse at the plaza’s center. Simón Bolívar gave Cartagena the title of “Heroic City” after it was the first to claim independence from Spain. This plaza quickly became one of my favorites, along with Plaza Fernández Madrid. I later found out that both were spots where Gabriel García Márquez frequented and that Plaza Fernández Madrid may have been a place of inspiration for Love in the Time of Cholera. I discovered this plaza and instantly fell in love with it within the first few hours after my arrival when I stopped here for a traditional dish of bandeja paisa. 

A friend who I worked with in Aruba and is now living in Bolivia met up with me those first few days after he spent some time in Bogotá. We hit all the big tourist sites, such as San Felipe de Barajas, a giant castle built on a hill to protect the city with a series of secret tunnels. We went for arepas, toured the Modern Art Museum, and sipped coffee inside coffee shops, my favorite being Abacus Books and Coffee. Every wall inside this coffee shop is floor to ceiling in books, a comprehensive collection of Latin American literature. We only had 48 hours together, so we packed it complete with a ton of sightseeing. He left Easter Sunday, and then I was on my own for the rest of the week afterward.

Cartagena is the perfect destination to fully experience this solo travel thing. With the realization that it is just you all alone, far away in this foreign world, a spotlight beams down on every moment of the journey. Besides the mindfulness aspect of solo travel, traveling alone also sets you free to do things at your own pace. Each day I would venture out with a specific destination in mind and then let the day unravel from there on my own time, which is slow and spontaneous.

The first thing I wanted to do was eat ceviche, so I headed to La Cevicheria, which was featured on Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. The wait to be seated at this restaurant was one hour.  Since I was on my own and free to make the decision to wait, I put myself as a party of one on the waiting list and took a stroll around the neighborhood. I returned after an hour and took a seat for lunch at a table outside on the sidewalk. I ordered up a plate fused with the local flavors of Colombia. The next thing I knew, I was sipping a mojito and snacking on plantain chips served with a dipping sauce. Moments later, I was served the most enormous and freshest platter of ceviche I had ever seen. The first bite was absolutely worth the wait.

The next day I penciled in a museum at the top of my agenda but then quickly wandered off on meandering paths as one boutique after another beckoned me inside. Colombia has quickly become a fashion destination, and Cartagena is the perfect window into Colombian designers. Whether borrowing from indigenous design and fabrics or incorporating bold tropical prints, these one-of-a-kind creations pop up in shop windows all over the city and seem to be an integral part of the landscape. I can’t imagine a trip to Colombia without purchasing a few items to hang inside your closet. Shortly after my shopping spree, more meandering paths led me outside the walled city to Getsemani. This neighborhood is quintessential Cartagena. The buildings are brightly painted with murals that tell the story of the city and its people. And all the people are out and about celebrating life, day and night.

I went at this pace for the rest of the week and let my itinerary create itself as I turned each corner. I took one afternoon for a spa day on a whim and spontaneously stopped at a restaurant jam-packed with locals—so the food must be good—for lunch another afternoon. All of this wandering about being fully present in the moment at your own pace and never knowing where the next step would lead made this trip feel a lot like a dream. And since Colombia is already a dreamlike destination, traveling it alone makes it even more magical.

And this, in my opinion, is the most significant benefit. It is like zooming with a lens on every moment of your journey. You pick up on details you may have missed otherwise lost in conversation with a friend or negotiating a decision about the next step of action. And something about zooming in on the details creates stronger memories of the whole experience. 

This was my third trip to Colombia over Easter weekend during the past three years. Maybe I will be back next year and make Colombia an Easter tradition. There is definitely more to see.

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