In Other Words, Part 1

To those of you who did not watch the election last night, is there room under your rock for me? And the majority of my country? Because while most of us are jealous of you, at this point we would give our voting arm for the chance to join you. There’s never been a time when more people wanted to leave the country. But I want to share something with you from my own experience, because I GTFO of America before it was cool, or trending on social media. In case you, my dear American friends, are now wanting to leave, I want to tell you what you can expect.

 

1. Everyone who knows you are American will ask you your opinion on any American event. Political campaigns, celebrity scandals, cultural icons, etc. You will feel like a bug under a microscope under the pressure of fairly representing everyone in the most diverse country in the world to someone who already has their opinions of you and your community formed. In other words, they will treat you like the one black/Latino/Asian/Muslim/Indian/etc. person at the party.
2. They will patronize you, assuming that just because you want to treat others with dignity and respect, that you are a weak and emotional person crippled by “political correctness.” In other words, they will treat you like an emotional woman.
3. They will turn judgmental eyes directly at you when people in your country do something unthinkable, like elect Donald Trump president. When you want to cry and scream because of what is going on in the world, you will feel instead like you are naked in a fish tank in a room full of people. In other words, they will treat you like Muslims and people of near- and middle-eastern descent are treated.
4. When they hear your accent and grammatical errors, they might switch to a higher volume and childish words, rather than simply repeating what they said, like you asked. It won’t matter how many languages you speak, where you have traveled, whether or not you got your master’s degree with an academic scholarship at the age of 22. In other words, they will treat you like immigrants are treated.
5. They won’t understand you. Your life, from your birth to the most recent breath you took, will be from a place that they do not, and cannot understand. That is not their fault, and they will be kind, and they will try to reach out to you, but you will never be fully understood by them because they do not walk around in your skin. You will feel isolated and alone, and unable to cast any blame because it is the fault of no one that you (and they!) were born in your/(their!) respective skin. In other words, you will be treated like a person from a racial, ethnic, or LGBTQ-minority is treated.

I can tell you, when I watched the results of the election on live TV, the one American woman in a room full of Czech men (and one Czech woman), and all the cameras turned to me, I fully felt the weight of minority status and differences of privilege for the first time in my life.

I learned to drive in one of the most treacherous, icy, and snowy winters on record in Washington state, and I learned to drive in a 200 Ford Ranger. The rear wheel drive and lightweight frame meant that that bad boy slid around on the roads like Jaromir Jagr – until we weighted down the bed over the rear axles with snow. We filled that bed with packed snow and firewood, and that let me drive on. From now on, I choose to take the weight of being an immigrant in Europe, and let it stabilize and drive me in my work. I’m not done! And that work will be further described in the next (bilingual) blog post.

21 Things I Learned from You: The Petraks’ New Life Together in Four, Three, Two, One

Four: Weeks since our long distance relationship ended.

Three: Weeks since we got married.

Two: Weeks we had to have a honeymoon and get my papers in order.

One: Full week we have lived in our own place!

Speaking of having our own place, please enjoy some pictures of nature near Lovosice, Ustecky kraj, Czech Republic:

 (also, how precious is our dog?)

Since I’ve got a bit of a breather before I start my job next month, I’m enjoying some time for reflection on my relationship with Jonáš and what its particularities have taught me. The overarching theme, through our premarital counseling and preparations, was that we are not getting married because we are good and loving people. We are getting married because God created marriage to be a picture of Christ and the church, and we as part of the church exist to glorify Him. Neither of us is perfect. You don’t even need a fine toothed comb to go through my life and find problems, you could use a wide-bristle brush. Even though Jonáš is perfect for me, he is not quite a perfect man (close, though). But we both love Christ above all else, following Him hand in hand with each other. And we love each other deeply. With that theme in mind, these are the particular things I’ve learned so far in my relationship and marriage:

1. Investing in a smartphone, wifi in your apartment, and a computer with good video-chat capabilities are necessary, not exorbitant.
2. You can, and must, still enjoy yourself while you and your love are apart – going out with friends, having your own hobbies and interests, enjoying being by yourself – because otherwise you’ll go crazy or get depressed (maybe both).
3. Don’t expect to be completely content with number 2, which I call being a spoken-for single person. No dating relationship is meant to last forever as it is, especially with long distance. You either break up with or end up with everyone you date, though long distance relationships tend to get serious sooner than close distance ones.
4. You will see how creative you both can share your hobbies and interests while you cultivate your love from afar, and you will amaze each other with this creativity.
5. If you’re dating someone on another continent, watch yourself when you’re around people in relationships. You’ll find yourself thinking everyone has it easier than you – that no one has to factor in 7-9 hours of time difference to talk, or wait 6 months to see each other for 10 days, or spend half their year’s salary on plane fare, or anything else that’s as hard as you have it. You know that may be true. But you also know every hardship your relationship faces is easier than getting over the person you love would be. So suck it up, Buttercup!
6. You’ll get really good at biting your tongue when your friends complain about a 20 minute drive to see their significant other, or how rough they have it because they only seeing their significant other on the weekends, or whatever is hard in their relationship. Love is selflessness – that’s what your relationship is teaching you, right?
7. You’ll start out being bummed about always being the third wheel for your close-distance relationship friends – then you’ll realize that you are a unicycle, and your close-distance relationship friends are your glorious training wheels (I kid, I kid. And the metaphor breaks down quickly. But it’s a funny mental picture, no?)
8. You will be grateful for your close-distance friends who support and love you in your time apart from your love. Keep those people close to you, and make sure you are being as good a friend to them as they are to you.
9. In your relationship, you will learn more about clear communication, love as a multi-faceted verb, counting your blessings, and selflessness than with anyone else, because you need to work 5 times harder to cross a language and cultural barrier to achieve and practice these.
10. You’ll never watch “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” the same after you make a Sunday date out of watching it over Skype, him on his PC and you on Netflix, each of you eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate in your respective country and time zone. It will become your favorite Mel Brooks movie after this date.
11. You should get used to patiently informing people who say things that seem dumb to you. You know that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country, there is no Communist government to restrict travel in the Czech Republic, and your fiancé is not in it for a green card, but not everyone knows this. You get to educate and enlighten people around you and fight ignorance! Lucky you!
12. You must choose your audience carefully when making jokes about international marriage brokers. Friendly office staff at the social security office who ask about the best places to see in Prague: good audience. Personnel at the US Embassy or USCIS: bad audience.
13. Your wedding will be awesome, because you will finally, finally, FINALLY never have to dread saying goodbye at the end of a vacation, or wait 6+ months to hug him again, or feel like half of your heart is half a world away. You won’t even mind that your wedding is over, because it means your life together is finally in the big leagues.
14. In the process of moving, you can only suppress your strong emotions about leaving your home and family until you lose something trivial like a water bottle or cell phone. At that point, you may have to cry in front of a bunch of strangers on an airplane, thinking that if you can’t keep track of a cell phone, you’re probably better off living under a bridge with nothing because maybe you could handle that.
15. Your first time out the door on your own in your new country may be rough. You’ll need to take lots of deep breaths and tell yourself to pretend you’re as confident and fearless as Queen Elizabeth. Or just picture yourself as Rocky Balboa and sing “Eye of the Tiger” in your head. Whatever floats your boat.
16. You might just find an awesome running route that goes right by one of the major rivers in Europe and is 5 minutes from your front door. Helloooo half marathon training!
17. You’ll learn all the possible ways to say, “I’m fine, don’t worry, I’m not that sick” to keep your mother-in-law from making you gargle apple cider vinegar between bites of garlic cloves to make your sore throat better.
18. You’ll eat your poorly-pronounced words when the ginger-lemon tea with local honey and shots of slivovice (plum-based moonshine) make your sore throat better.
19. You’re going to butcher the local language most times you open your mouth. These sloppy mistakes will be forgotten when you make jokes in the local language that people find funny, or when you look in a shop mirror waiting for the metro and breathe a sigh of relief that you’re wearing clothes that fit in with local fashion.
20. Sometimes you will feel like your failure to fit in, navigate visas and work permits, or live up to your own standards of good enough, mean you are stupid, incompetent, worthless, and very alone.
21. Your husband will find you wherever you’ve escaped to when you are experiencing number 20, give you a hug, and whisper in your ear how brave he thinks you are and how much he respects you for the sacrifices you’ve made. And as much as your stubborn and independent heart thinks you can do it on your own, he generates something in you that you could never manufacture for yourself.

Anyway… That’s the short list. I’m sure there will be more. More than that, I’m sure in a year, or two, or thirty, I’ll look back on this and laugh at how foreshortened my perspective was. But hey, right now I’m here. The football game just ended, and I need to celebrate the Broncos win with my husband – and he’s right across the apartment! Not the ocean! He’s like, right there, guys. How awesome is that?!

21 Things I Learned from You: The Petraks’ New Life Together in Four, Three, Two, One

Four: Weeks since our long distance relationship ended.

Three: Weeks since we got married.

Two: Weeks we had to have a honeymoon and get my papers in order.

One: Full week we have lived in our own place!

Speaking of having our own place, please enjoy some pictures of nature near Lovosice, Ustecky kraj, Czech Republic:

 (also, how precious is our dog?)

Since I’ve got a bit of a breather before I start my job next month, I’m enjoying some time for reflection on my relationship with Jonáš and what its particularities have taught me. The overarching theme, through our premarital counseling and preparations, was that we are not getting married because we are good and loving people. We are getting married because God created marriage to be a picture of Christ and the church, and we as part of the church exist to glorify Him. Neither of us is perfect. You don’t even need a fine toothed comb to go through my life and find problems, you could use a wide-bristle brush. Even though Jonáš is perfect for me, he is not quite a perfect man (close, though). But we both love Christ above all else, following Him hand in hand with each other. And we love each other deeply. With that theme in mind, these are the particular things I’ve learned so far in my relationship and marriage:

1. Investing in a smartphone, wifi in your apartment, and a computer with good video-chat capabilities are necessary, not exorbitant.
2. You can, and must, still enjoy yourself while you and your love are apart – going out with friends, having your own hobbies and interests, enjoying being by yourself – because otherwise you’ll go crazy or get depressed (maybe both).
3. Don’t expect to be completely content with number 2, which I call being a spoken-for single person. No dating relationship is meant to last forever as it is, especially with long distance. You either break up with or end up with everyone you date, though long distance relationships tend to get serious sooner than close distance ones.
4. You will see how creative you both can share your hobbies and interests while you cultivate your love from afar, and you will amaze each other with this creativity.
5. If you’re dating someone on another continent, watch yourself when you’re around people in relationships. You’ll find yourself thinking everyone has it easier than you – that no one has to factor in 7-9 hours of time difference to talk, or wait 6 months to see each other for 10 days, or spend half their year’s salary on plane fare, or anything else that’s as hard as you have it. You know that may be true. But you also know every hardship your relationship faces is easier than getting over the person you love would be. So suck it up, Buttercup!
6. You’ll get really good at biting your tongue when your friends complain about a 20 minute drive to see their significant other, or how rough they have it because they only seeing their significant other on the weekends, or whatever is hard in their relationship. Love is selflessness – that’s what your relationship is teaching you, right?
7. You’ll start out being bummed about always being the third wheel for your close-distance relationship friends – then you’ll realize that you are a unicycle, and your close-distance relationship friends are your glorious training wheels (I kid, I kid. And the metaphor breaks down quickly. But it’s a funny mental picture, no?)
8. You will be grateful for your close-distance friends who support and love you in your time apart from your love. Keep those people close to you, and make sure you are being as good a friend to them as they are to you.
9. In your relationship, you will learn more about clear communication, love as a multi-faceted verb, counting your blessings, and selflessness than with anyone else, because you need to work 5 times harder to cross a language and cultural barrier to achieve and practice these.
10. You’ll never watch “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” the same after you make a Sunday date out of watching it over Skype, him on his PC and you on Netflix, each of you eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate in your respective country and time zone. It will become your favorite Mel Brooks movie after this date.
11. You should get used to patiently informing people who say things that seem dumb to you. You know that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country, there is no Communist government to restrict travel in the Czech Republic, and your fiancé is not in it for a green card, but not everyone knows this. You get to educate and enlighten people around you and fight ignorance! Lucky you!
12. You must choose your audience carefully when making jokes about international marriage brokers. Friendly office staff at the social security office who ask about the best places to see in Prague: good audience. Personnel at the US Embassy or USCIS: bad audience.
13. Your wedding will be awesome, because you will finally, finally, FINALLY never have to dread saying goodbye at the end of a vacation, or wait 6+ months to hug him again, or feel like half of your heart is half a world away. You won’t even mind that your wedding is over, because it means your life together is finally in the big leagues.
14. In the process of moving, you can only suppress your strong emotions about leaving your home and family until you lose something trivial like a water bottle or cell phone. At that point, you may have to cry in front of a bunch of strangers on an airplane, thinking that if you can’t keep track of a cell phone, you’re probably better off living under a bridge with nothing because maybe you could handle that.
15. Your first time out the door on your own in your new country may be rough. You’ll need to take lots of deep breaths and tell yourself to pretend you’re as confident and fearless as Queen Elizabeth. Or just picture yourself as Rocky Balboa and sing “Eye of the Tiger” in your head. Whatever floats your boat.
16. You might just find an awesome running route that goes right by one of the major rivers in Europe and is 5 minutes from your front door. Helloooo half marathon training!
17. You’ll learn all the possible ways to say, “I’m fine, don’t worry, I’m not that sick” to keep your mother-in-law from making you gargle apple cider vinegar between bites of garlic cloves to make your sore throat better.
18. You’ll eat your poorly-pronounced words when the ginger-lemon tea with local honey and shots of slivovice (plum-based moonshine) make your sore throat better.
19. You’re going to butcher the local language most times you open your mouth. These sloppy mistakes will be forgotten when you make jokes in the local language that people find funny, or when you look in a shop mirror waiting for the metro and breathe a sigh of relief that you’re wearing clothes that fit in with local fashion.
20. Sometimes you will feel like your failure to fit in, navigate visas and work permits, or live up to your own standards of good enough, mean you are stupid, incompetent, worthless, and very alone.
21. Your husband will find you wherever you’ve escaped to when you are experiencing number 20, give you a hug, and whisper in your ear how brave he thinks you are and how much he respects you for the sacrifices you’ve made. And as much as your stubborn and independent heart thinks you can do it on your own, this generates something in you that you could never manufacture for yourself.

Anyway… That’s the short list. I’m sure there will be more. More than that, I’m sure in a year, or two, or thirty, I’ll look back on this and laugh at how foreshortened my perspective was. But hey, right now I’m here. The football game just ended, and I need to celebrate the Broncos win with my husband – and he’s right across the apartment! Not the ocean! He’s like, right there, guys. How awesome is that?!

And don’t get me STARTED on the champagne flutes – reflections on my last month of singleness and wedding planning

The title is misleading. I don’t think we even have champagne flutes at the wedding. Honestly, I forget what’s on the menu. I know it’s food, and we ordered a lot, and my dad said that no we didn’t need to cut costs by using paper plates (which, for the record, was my vote). I feel very much like an anti-bride. A week ago, someone asked me when the wedding was, and I had to say, “Uh…. Ah…. In August? Right! August 21st! August 21st!” My friends laughed, and I covered my tracks by saying “Well, I’m more excited for the marriage than the wedding.” This was and is true – a wedding is just a party for a day, marking the end of a long, painful period of long distance dating that neither of us wants to replicate. But spending the rest of my life with the greatest friend and adventure buddy, not to mention most handsome and romantic and sexy man on earth! Seriously, look at him! And I get to marry him! Not only that, he wants to marry me too! He asked first, in fact 😉

But I digress. As the wedding gets closer, I catch myself almost feeling resentful of talking about it. Another contrast between St. Louis and Spokane: in St. Louis, people would ask how I was, how work was going, how Jonáš was doing. Here, people ask about how the wedding planning is going. Cultural difference? Maybe. Being friendly and nice? CERTAINLY! And I am honored and touched that they care about what’s going on in my life, and want to ask about it and wish me well. Thank you, to everyone who’s asked and congratulated, it really means a lot. Those of you who are coming to the wedding, Jonáš and I are truly honored by your love and care for us. I mean it 🙂

It’s just… different than I thought it would be.

I actively did NOT want to get married so vehemently, that it was truly a miracle of God through Jonáš that I even got engaged. So many places to travel to, so many valuable people to meet and share life with, so many directions to go in my career, settling down for one long-term relationship didn’t seem reasonable. Yet here we are, Jonáš didn’t fall out of love with me six weeks after we started dating, and by December of 2012 I couldn’t imagine my life without him. The best and most meaningful relationships are the ones that you personally have to orchestrate very little, the ones which you fight for the most with the most resultant gratification, the ones that change you the most, and the ones that change your own world the most for the better. Reason has some to do with it, but there’s a fair bit of shoulder-shrugging. Why do I love Jonáš? For his huge heart, his warmth, his sense of humor, the passion with which he serves those around him, for his easygoing and happy-go-lucky nature…for our compatibility, for the way he respects me and is loyal to me…. but moreover, just because he is who he is, and he’s the only one that’s just like him, and that makes him the most precious and valuable Jonáš that there ever was, and I don’t want to let such a gift get lost.

Yeah, yeah, 20-year-old me. I’m taking your borderline feminazi rants from your little soapbox, and kindly telling you to stick them where the sun don’t shine. You were wrong. Just wait till you meet this guy, then you’ll see where I’m coming from.

Even for how much I’ve changed, when people’s first response to seeing me is to ask about the wedding, it’s hard to fight thoughts like this: There’s so much else I’ve done in the last few years, there’s so much more about the world that is so interesting to talk about, not to mention what’s going on in the world and our country, I could take or leave the wedding. For example, this summer alone, I’ve worked with these gorgeous kids teaching them English every day!

Look! She drew me!

 And seriously, that kid in the middle cracks me up every day!

They have fascinating families, and talents, they draw beautifully, and they’re funny, and they each have their own stories and personalities – let’s talk about them! And I could talk your ear off about Gaby and Sam, and Jay’La, and Brayan, and Tyon, and Erica, and Antonio, and all the kids I worked with in St. Louis who I still miss like they were my own kiddos. They will be changing the world and overcoming stereotypes and a world that wants to look down on them. And they’re so smart and wonderful, but so many people will just blow past them because they’re black or wear “gangster” clothes or talk with an accent or celebrate Eid, or all of the above. I could talk for hours about them!

Even looking at my own life, the wedding barely makes it onto my personal roster of current events, if I’m honest. I left a city where I fought for my place and came to adore the people just a few weeks ago. Moving is a loss that you have to mourn, and I’m still mourning my loves there. I moved back to a city where I have fewer common experiences with the people, and many close friends live far away, and thus I feel like a stranger amongst familiar faces. I’m realizing just how much I’ve changed in six years, much of my worldview and perspective. Speaking of the world… I have to plan the logistics of a move across the world, to a new culture and a town where I will be the only native English speaker. I don’t know a single other person who has been in my exact situation, and I don’t even know how to mentally or emotionally prepare myself. I’m getting a crash course in a new career path right now, in class and teaching 8 hours a day for four weeks. I love it, I love my kid s and enjoy my peers, but in 5 days I’ll be saying goodbye all over again. In short, I’m still trying to wrap my head around what’s swirling around me. And yes, there is a whole slew of wedding stressors that I find myself trying to ignore, but I can’t really, because I’m the top in the chain of command and there’s only four weeks left. Marriage is wonderful, and the goal of our serious relationship, and my new life will be an exciting adventure, and I’ll get to travel, and learn new languages, and be with my love and all that, and that will be exciting, but I can’t always remind myself of that. I’m not omniscient. Pardon the crassness, but my knee-jerk response to stress or emotions is to get mad and combative, so this is how I feel about wedding planning much of the time:

 (source: Google Images, keywords <pissed off bride>)

The funny thing is, when Jonáš and I had a heart to heart about what was on both of our mind, we shared a moment that went like this:

“I’m sorry… I love you and I want to be married to you, but right now, I could not care less about this stupid wedding.”

“Yeah… Me too.”

“Wait, really? You too?”

“Yeah… I can’t wait to see you, and I can’t wait to be done with this stupid long distance. Just a few more weeks, we can make it. And I know it will be a beautiful wedding, and we’ll be ok.”

I think the fact that we’re on the same page even at a low point in our relationship is a good sign that we’re right for each other, and even the wedding planning will be worth all the times I want to hit my head on the wall. So I guess, like many things in life, my response to wedding planning and how I’m doing is both F.I.N.E. (Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional) and F.I.N.E. (First-rate, Impressive, Not bad, and Exceptional). And it’s probably fine and reasonable that it’s more the first kind sometimes.