Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I blogged? Freneticism, sorry.
The title for this post was actually inspired by a talk I had last Saturday night with Blonde American Friend L's mom. Since parents - or any people of an equal wisdom/life experience/non-douchiness level - are rare in Dubai, I'm always super-excited to stalk visiting parental units whenever they happen to roll into town. (Pointed "ahem" in the direction of Tennessee...)
In that spirit, L & I brought her visiting mom to a friend's dinner party last weekend, where I had a great heart-to-heart with Mrs. G about expatriate life and cross-cultural adjustment. Momma G is an academic who has done research into exchange programs and lived abroad in Australia herself, so it was interesting to talk to her about how, based on typical expatriation studies, the time you're most homesick is about 90 days out, and how it's funny that I really never got super-homesick until I had been here for right around a year, and why that was, and all the different variations in people's international experiences, and how we each adjust to this crazy unwieldy experience of being an alien.
The most interesting takeaway I had from our conversation was what she said about going home. She was just coming from a week of meetings in Qatar with American colleagues who have lived abroad for a decade or more, and she said that across the board, they all say the same thing: you can't go home again. In other words, you can physically go back to the States, to visit or to live, but it won't be the place you left - the people won't be the same as you left them, and you won't relate to your surroundings the same way you did before you went away. After living abroad in the long term, she claims, you'll always be kind of "neither here nor there."
It's interesting, and it's something to thing about as my life here unfolds... there's definitely a part of her thinking that resonates with me, because I do sometimes feel stuck in between. People here can never reeeeeeeeally know me the way that people back home do, but at the same time, people back home can never reeeeeeeeally understand what my life here is like. Interesting.
At any rate, in the fortnight since last I blogged... was in Dubai two weeks ago, Syria last week, Dubai this weekend, and now off to Syria again from tomorrow morning until Wednesday night, when I fly back to Dubai, have Thanksgiving at a friend's house on the Palm (yeah yeah, I was going to cook, but he has hired help... and a 15,000 square-foot villa in which the manservants may roam freely as they cook for us), then fly to Beirut, do some touristy things, run a marathon on Sunday, fly back to Dubai, and finally end up back in Syria on Monday morning, I think via Bahrain because all the other flights are booked and/or don't get me there in time for my Monday meetings. Fun week!
Last week in Syria was good but crazy. 15-hour days are the norm on the road, and after one such day I caused more than a bit of trouble for myself by going on a late-night run that accidentally ended with me wandering onto the grounds of the presidential palace, getting chased by a Syrian army guard who charged towards me with his Kalashnikov drawn, trigger pulled, causing me to drop to my knees bawling, hands in the air, inventing Arabic explanations to get myself out of trouble ("shoo moushkila? ana asfa! ana bint! mafi moushkila!" - "what's the problem? I'm sorry! I'm a woman! There's no problem!" [... which, come to think of it, is kind of reminiscent of my famous admonition to the Italian gypsy children who tried to rob us on a bus in Rome back in 2001: "basta, basta! non va bene!" - "enough, enough! it is not going well!" ... clearly, my linguistic skills are at top form during times of crisis]).
Anyhow! Having survived my gun run-in (and the police escort that drove me back to my hotel when I was released but deemed suspicious enough to warrant supervision), I got back to Dubai just in time to watch the world's largest fireworks display on Thursday night in celebration of the grand opening of the Atlantis (which, ho hum, I've already been to like 5 times... meh, this is what happens when your soft opening and your hard opening are 2 months apart and you live in a town where there's nothing else to do besides scope 5-star hotels). Friday involved champagne brunch at the Ritz then a trip to the new Dubai Mall, where L and I watched some sharks, drop-kicked some ill-disciplined toddlers, and decided - much to our chagrin - that an hour was too long to wait in line for the first Taco Bell in the Middle East. Saturday featured a fast 8-miler (last hard run before the marathon!), some polo matches at Arabian Ranches (um... because we're in with the equestrian set now), and then dinner and drinks with Pakistani-Hollywood friend TK (he of the Seventh Heaven introductions) at the new Address hotel, where one of our dinner companions turned out to be the Today Show correspondent who had just covered the Atlantis opening. Ha. Only in Dubai.
All of which leads me to say... I should go to bed. Because whether or not I can go home again, I still have to go to Syria tomorrow. XOXO!
