Standing Room Only

Извините! It's Russian for, "I'm sorry," or "Excuse me." And for some reason, I still find myself saying it every once in a while when pushing through crowds or when getting off of buses. It's just one of those little things that's remained with me from my days as a missionary in Ukraine.

Going from America to Ukraine was pretty disorienting on its own, but with two years there to pick up the social customs and the language and the mannerisms, coming home was, perhaps, an even bigger shock for me. I remember getting off the plane and marveling at drinking fountains, something I had seen only once in my two-years' absence. I remember my perplexity at seeing everyone crazy-talking -- that it, chattering away into their Bluetooth earpieces. More than anything, though, I remember thinking that Americans were really rude: you would ask them how they were doing, and they would either say hi or give a monosyllabic answer and hurry off to who knows where. In Ukraine, "How are you?" is a question. And the people stop and respond to it openly. "My dog died, and we don't have money to pay for power, and I planted my tulips today." Here in America, "How are you?" is a greeting, to be offered up in passing. It really threw me off for a while. I still feel sometimes like there's this hazy "Russian" layer of reality that just kind of lingers in the back of my mind, the remnants and daily evidence of my time in Ukraine. Words will trigger it. The smell of fresh bread will trigger it. Public transportation. Old people. Little kids. Names. Faces. It's everywhere, and yet I'm the only one to see it.

I've been reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, and there it talks about JITTs, or people who through futuristic "Just in Time Training" are able to master a language or skill in a matter of days or weeks.cognitive distortion that takes places in such individuals, the blurriness of personality, and reading those words, I thought that I maybe understood a little bit what JITTs were going through. I sometimes feel like I am split between two people, between two cultures and two languages. I felt like I did pretty well when I only had to speak and think in Russian, but now, back in America, studying both English and Russian, I find that I think in a sort of hodgepodge mixture of the two; when I go to speak, I end up stumbling over ideas or words from lack of use in one language or another.

Writing is hard sometimes, because the words sound so foreign to me. They have a strange feel in my mouth, and they look wrong on the page. Joke. I sat staring at that word for a full minute the other day, saying it over and over again in my mind to reinforce its existence and wondering if writing would ever come easily again. It's been like rediscovering English all over again and with it myself.