Down by the Water
My first trip home from the Czech Republic was surreal. Including an 11-hour layover in London-Heathrow, the entire journey came to about 33 hours from start to finish. One tram, one train, one bus, one plane, one bus, and another plane later, my step-sister picked me up and we made the essential white girl stop on the way home before doing anything else: Starbucks.
Seattle changed but didn't change at all. I kept expecting this massive influx of reverse culture shock but instead it was little mannerisms or habits I picked up in CZ I noticed, like putting my key in the door the wrong way, assuming the flush for the toilet was located in the center of the tank, or how to drive a car. It wasn't like coming back to the Pride Lands after your British uncle screwed everything up for you by killing your dad. Everything was still standing even though the mood was openly more volatile than when I left. Despite the crazy jet lag and early morning insulin regimen, I slipped back into the normalcy of being an adult living at home with their parents.
After arriving, I came to realize how much I missed a few things, like Corn Chex. I don't mean this as a pun and I temporarily had to rewire my brain to type that word, but cereal isn't a common breakfast food here. In the US you have an entire aisle dedicated to cartoons and the sugary nonsense they sponsor. But what I missed was lumbering out of bed, haphazardly pouring squares or circles out of a really noisy bag and then dousing it with a milk of my choosing. Then I was done! That's it. Boom. Breakfast, and not necessarily a balanced one.
Cereal does exist here but not in the way it does in the US. Same thing with big trucks. I maybe see a truck twice a week here, a Ford something-or-other. It's not that I completely forget they exist, but it's kind of like I completely forget they exist. They're just impractical. Brno is a tremendously easy city in which to not own a car. With 12 tram lines (well, 11 tram lines but the number 7 is missing...) and numerous busses and trolleys, there's no reason for me to get a Czech drivers license. As a resident here, I can no longer get an international driving permit and I would need to take drivers ed in Czech.
A little more than 24 hours later after landing in Seattle, I headlined a show in Tacoma at a community cafe/gallery/meeting place or whatever these multifunctional purpose spaces are called. All 25 minutes of me rambling were interrupted with little jet-laggy sighs or intruding thoughts with zero filter. It felt good to let loose in front of an audience that could understand me in our mother tongue. On stages in CZ, Slovakia, Poland, and Austria, I've had to slow my pace WAY down just to get a simple joke across but also to make sure everyone could understand me. Now I had a room full of people that understood me and a mic to make it even louder. It might have been the jet lag, but it felt so relieving to relax on stage, dick around, and take my time.
I did a handful of sets in Seattle with a trip to Tucson sandwiched in. As I was getting used to one jet lag, I set off for Arizona to see my dad, step-mom, and uncle for another subpar time change. The desert was welcoming with temperatures in the 70s and food which wasn't commandeered by another culture who tried to create what they think is Mexican food. Everyone in my Tucson family is a photographer so the images which resulted from my trip look easy, natural, and effortless.
After looking through the photos, I sighed when realizing that there haven't been a lot of pictures taken of me in the last year because of how much time I've spent alone. And this isn't going to turn into a pity party; it's just fact. In Brno I'm either taking pictures of myself or other stuff, usually kitty. I was pleased how my hair turned out, which was done three hours after I landed in Seattle, and it was nice to be outside in a t-shirt because Brno was crazy cold when I returned.
I flew back to Seattle from Tucson on Thanksgiving Day and spent some time in Salt Lake City between connections. The family dinner in Seattle was a bit bumbling, a little off-the-rails, and somewhat distracting, but we kept it together between wrangling kids and passing dishes in a direction that was never discussed beforehand. I also got to meet my new niece, Emily. Well, not new. She's a year old now and was born only a few weeks after I had left for CZ. She's an incredibly happy baby and very interested in everything around her, especially her almost three-year-old sister. When combined with eight-year-old Laszlo, there are actually a troupe of kids now at family gatherings. For so long it was just Laszlo in varying degrees of age over the years, but now he has cousins who are beginning to communicate better. I don't use the word "rambunctious" ever, but that's exactly what Thanksgiving was. It was like the Benny Hill theme was the soundtrack to Toy Story.
The next day I turned 31. I went out to dinner with mom and step-dad who were trying incredibly hard to get the server to become interested in me. I think he was until my mom went the extra mile and mentioned I live in Europe, which is something else I'm going to debunk now:
I'm not on vacation 24/7 because I live here. I received some confusing reactions right after I moved, comments to the tune of "god it must be amazing to be on vacation every day." If you've kept abreast of my immigration situation on here or my social media, you're well aware that this has been far from vacation. All bureaucracy aside, I'm doing everything I'd be doing in the US. For instance today I went to a psychiatry appointment and the discount grocery store on my way home. I stopped to take some pictures, and now I'm home with Patrick. This exact day has clearly played out in Seattle more than once and I'm really not trying to be hacky, but that's where I'm at. One day last year I watched all three Men in Blacks in one sitting. Depression doesn't know I moved to Europe. My anxiety sure as shit does, but my depression doesn't.
Anyway, my birthday. It was great. I did a show in White Center and overall it was cool seeing how Seattle is getting it's shit together with comedy, and when I say that I mean there are some seriously great people doing some seriously great things. Some parts of me felt weird to be back, some places definitely felt like the cafeteria in Mean Girls. I wasn't sure of what my status was or if I would be perceived the same upon my return. I had a lot of shit to clear up while I was trying to sort out my life while living nine hours ahead, and I'm hoping a lot of it has been forgotten.
One important day when I was home was seeing my three closest friends in comedy but also just my three friends who I can get real with. We had a family dinner of sorts with chicken wings and hella La Croix. We talked about our fears, tumultuous events from the past year, our travels, and our current standings with stand up. It felt good to be myself around the people to whom I feel comfortable revealing myself. No pressure.
And to be honest, the hardest part was leaving. The only other time I've cried when flying out of an airport was when I was in Burbank and I was leaving a relationship that had ambiguous boundaries at the time. This time it was different, even harder than moving last year. I felt so reconnected with my family and my hometown and my familiar environment. I'm still unclear about what was making me cry. It could be a lot of reasons but I think maybe it's because I didn't want that camaraderie to end. I was knowingly taking a trip forward, and this time I even knew what was on the other side. I knew what was waiting for me. So why was this time so much harder, so much more emotionally taxing than the original move itself?
I returned to Brno with the city anxiously celebrating Black Friday because they don't have a Thanksgiving. The Christmas markets are up and running and all of the white and red holiday lights are running through the alleyways in the city center. We had our first snow on Saturday and I turned my heat on in my flat for the first time. Nothing blew up or caught on fire so I think we're safe for now. I outfitted my sleeping nook with some shelves and a nightlight so now my opium den is almost fully functional and almost ready for Instagram.
Right now I'm spending time waiting to hear back from IBM. Oh yeah, probably should have explained that earlier. I've been too stressed to write until now but long story short I got let go from my job at AT&T and due to the timing of it, the trial period I was under erased any valid visa I had so in order to not get deported at the end of December, I needed to find a job which will sponsor both my job and my residence in the Czech Republic. I interviewed at IBM with a group of four women and within the next week, they offered me a position. Part of the reason I was stressed was because I had initially made plans to go home for the first two weeks of November because it was the only time I could take from my job for the holidays...but then I had no job for the holidays and I needed to patch things up with immigration before leaving the country. I suspended my trip for two weeks while I communicated with IBM and made sure everyone knew I would be on holiday and unavailable for interviews and phone calls. The situation with IBM became more and more solidified and on Thanksgiving morning I woke up to an official job offer.
I'm hoping to start sometime in January, but as I've learned over the past year, I need to add an extra 60 days to any sort of bureaucratic timeline in the Czech Republic. So maybe before Easter is more realistic. Once again I have something on the horizon, but now I just have to wait.
Also I went to Dick's while I was home and it was fucking awesome.
