Country Roads, Take me Home

One crosses four stages when s/he comes to a new country, said the facilitator at the orientation for the Fulbright FLTAs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The four Hs. First it is the Honeymoon stage where everything about the new country seems great and fun. Everyone seems so friendly and the place appears to teem with excitement. Then comes the Hostility stage when the dreams are deceived and you are faced with all the shocks and hazards of a foreign territory. The Humor stage comes after that where you laugh at all your naiveties – “ha ha ha! I didn’t know how to use the vending machine” or “hi hi hi! I was lost at the New York Penn station for 2 hours until my friend came and rescued me”—and so on. The last stage is the Home stage where you come full circle and feel confident and comfortable and at home in the new country. With all its pros and cons you love to stay in the country which was once so foreign to you. She sincerely hoped that we all would experience the Home stage in the US at least by the end of our 10 months stay, if not before.

Laws and rules never work smoothly with me. If there is a law book that stands high in my estimation, it will be the Murphy’s Law. For me, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Things have been going wrong from the very first day I arrived here, or even before that. I almost missed the flight from Dubai to London. I was sitting in the airport lounge and reading an all time favorite book of mine (Chobirr Deshe Kobitar Deshe by Sunil) when I heard they were announcing someone’s name and telling it was the last call to board. It was some poor Mash-kat Khassen and I genuinely felt bad about him/her and went back to my book. It was almost time for my flight so I sluggishly went to the airline counter and they told me to run to the aircraft because the gate was closing. They were actually announcing for me! Things that went wrong after coming to the states would require me to write the length of two novels. I plan to write about them sometime later.

I don’t have much work to do here. I live in a fairly nice apartment with two other people. I go to class, come back, cook, eat, read, write or listen to music. It sounds like the perfect little life that any Bangladeshi girl would want. But if you ask me, I wanna go home.

Let me share with you what happened today when I was waiting for my shuttle to go my university. I was standing in the corner of the street and I heard some noise and shouts in the apartment right by the road. Then suddenly the window glass from the first floor broke and fell on the road in thousand of pieces. I don’t know what happened there. But I could be severely injured in a matter of minutes. I was standing right there half a minute ago! That was scary.

I had one of my best experiences in that particular corner of the road as well. Some weeks back I was standing there waiting for the shuttle. It was raining quite heavily. I didn’t have an umbrella so I was trying to cover my head with my jacket. A car stopped in front of me and a man gave me his umbrella. He saw that I was hesitant, but he insisted that I took it. He later gave me a ride to my university. I figured out he owns a bar at the corner of the street where I lived. He told me giving me the umbrella was his good deed of the day.

(To be continued)

photo courtesy: flickr.com/photos/ilovethecolts/2673760915/