Leslie: I was going to try to keep the blog a little longer and think about the reverse culture-shock I always feel when I return after significant time abroad, but we don't have enough sustained internet access. So just a few thoughts.
Returning is a significant part of traveling. When you get home after an extended time away, there is a transition, a reverse culture shock, where the familiar suddenly seems different. Sometimes there is a great relief to return home, and other times it is sad to leave the new and return to the old. The latter experiences mean that you adjusted to some part of the new culture, and have to now adapt back. This is not my first adjustment back to the US, but it is one that is surprisingly with a lot more sadness than relief. I would have thought that American showers and toilets would be a great relief, but they are not. Maybe in winter I’d miss the warm water rolling down my back for 15 minutes, but in summer I didn’t mind using the hand shower and turning off water while I soaped up. I’m also more eco-conscious than I was the last time I was in Greece, so I appreciated the benefits of Greek showers more. As for the toilets, I think after China and several trips to Greece, it just isn’t a big deal to toss the paper into the bin instead of the bowl. I adjusted to both of those.
What I miss about Greece: the food above and beyond all. Not just the delicious fresh and flavorful vegetables and the divine fruits, but other things. I really like eating family style. Typically we’d order a couple of meats, a salad, a couple of veggie dishes, octopus or squid if they had it and French fries, and then just share everything. I liked the variety of ordering family style. I also liked how it worked with the kids. There WERE NO children’s meals in Greece. Kids just eat some of the dishes. So we’d make sure there was meat for the kids and fries, and then they’d be free to try the rest or not. Alex learned to love Greek salads (and the feta) and tzaziki. Jeremiah liked the fried zucchini balls. Ellie liked squid. No one made them eat any particular thing, so they were free to try what they liked, and it was easy to make sure there was something they’d eat without ordering something particular for them. They ate maybe one hamburger each the entire 5 weeks. No chicken nuggets, no pizza, no macaroni and cheese. And they were very happy. Finally, it was great portion control. On the first night with the students, they each ordered their own meal, and as we had 10 women, they wanted take out boxes at the end. This was a chain, so they had them, but it took some time to communicate what we wanted. Take out boxes are not usual in Greece. When you eat family style, it is pretty easy to order the right amount even when some people eat a lot and others eat a little because everyone shares. But even the individually portioned foods are sized better. I got a little sandwich one day that was smaller than a Subway 6-inch sandwich and was about $2. It was perfect for a grab-and-go lunch for me. I got Alex a lot of tiropitas for snacks, and again, it was the size of his hand, and about $1.75. Even the ice cream was human-sized instead of the monster portions we get at Cold Stone or Marble Slab. Tonight we went to a New England seafood restaurant and each got our own dish. We ended up with 5 take-away boxes. It is nice to have a second meal, but looking at the sizes of the plates, it was appalling. And even knowing we were going to take half of it home, it was hard not to overeat. I never overate in Greece. Why do we do this to ourselves? There is something about value that ends up being a very bad deal in the long run.
I am surprised to notice that I didn't miss food from home, even though I typically will miss American things like peanut butter, seltzer, particular brands of cereal... I even changed my breakfast habits, which are normally the last to go for me. At home I make my own smoothies for breakfast, but here I had a Greek breakfast: hard boiled egg, toast, sometimes even just a bit of feta, or a ham and cheese paninini (Greek food since at least 1990!). Maybe it was because it has been so long since I lived in a foreign country, I cared more about adapting than any of the other times (it was a rare treat this time, to live in Athens for 5 weeks, whereas it always seemed like something I was making into part of my life before). Maybe also because I've become a lot more critical of American consumer culture than I was when I was first traveling. Maybe it is because I'm not yet home (still in Connecticut).
Maybe that is part of it. I’m really grateful to be in Connecticut. There is more farm-fresh food up here (a twice-weekly farmer’s market closer than the grocery store, lots of small family-owned specialty shops). I’ve not yet gone into a big grocery store; I know that is always a shock and overwhelming. We’ve bought a lot from small, locally owned groceries that remind me of Greece. We were in a natural food store, and I bought almost nothing. That surprised me.
We also went into some bookstores here. It was good to have such a selection of English books. We didn’t bring enough books for the kids, and I was always looking over the paltry English selections trying to see if there was something that was not outrageously expensive that I could get when we were in Greece. But I didn’t have much time to read myself, which was a hardship, so I was looking at books for me. This surprised me: I wanted more books about Greece. I’m still actively thinking about what I saw and was thinking about. In Thessaloniki I read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which is about life in Cephalonia from just before WWII to the 1990s. But I wanted to read more. Typically when I am home from a trip, I am ready to move on in my reading. But not this time. Which is a good thing, because it is almost time to think about recruiting for next year...
So this is αντίο σας... see you next year.
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