Do you ever have moments when you literally laugh at loud at yourself?
Friday morning at around 9:30 AM (remember Friday is the first day of the weekend here, so I'm usually still sleeping off my hangover at that hour, shawarma wrappers and stilettos strewn around my bed), I found myself driving down Sheikh Zayed Road.
Yes, that's right. Driving down the highway. In my SUV. Blaring Jessica Simpson's duet with Dolly Parton from her new country album. On my way to meet New American Friend M at the evangelical church he attends. And then to have lunch at the mall with fellow churchgoers.
And all of a sudden I started cracking up behind the wheel, as I realized - isn't this the life that, a year or two ago, I would have told you I left the US to avoid? More precisely, isn't it a scenario that I would have used, not to deride my roots, but to show how much more worldly I am than that? Cruising through suburban sprawl in my big fat car, listening to country music and hanging out with God-fearing people in churches and malls? [Insert over-educated, blue-state, latte-liberal value judgments here.]
And yet, I haven't been happier in Dubai in a LONG time than I was on Friday morning. (As I explained to E last night, "I mean, it's still Dubai, but at least if you meet people at church you know that they're trying not to be assholes.")
Which leads me to believe that... living abroad takes you back to your roots?
What I can't figure out is whether this has happened in a reactionary way ("F this place, how can I make myself most at odds with my surroundings?! Yes, I will listen to country music and go to church!") or just in a natural way ("I probably would have ended up liking country music and wanting to go to church after another 10 years of pseudointellectual postmodern posturing in New York or DC anyhow, but the intensity of Dubai sped the process along.")
I feel like this is all tied in with the fact that I'm starting to negotiate actually "living" in Dubai. I have noticed a qualitative difference (which has probably been apparent on this blog) in my attitude and mentality over the past few months, as I've inched up the ticker from "I've lived here a year" to "I've lived here almost a year and a half." It may seem like a subtle distinction, but I feel like it's only in hitting the year-plus mark that I've been forced to confront some of the realities of my life abroad. That phenomenon is borne out by some of the cursory readings I've done on acclimation and cross-cultural adjustment - hell, it even ties in with the theory of a "sophomore slump" at university, which I knew and suffered through all too well.
In all my previous experiences "living" abroad - 6 weeks in France, 3 months in Italy, 6 months in Scotland, 11 months in England - I've never actually gotten to the stock-taking phase of my life there. I've never settled in enough for the noise to die down, for the bells and whistles to stop going off, for everything to stop being new! and exciting! and different! and just be... mundane, and sometimes very frustrating. And now that I'm at that point, it's very interesting to see where it takes me.
To the unlikeliest of places, it would seem. And yet... maybe not so unlikely after all. ;)
