Yesterday Daniel and I had a date night, and as usual neither of us had made plans, so after some random meandering we ended up at an Irish pub that recently opened here. It was a good choice - the food was decent and the place wasn't busy at all, so we could just relax and enjoy ourselves. And oh yeah, they spoke English.
These days I can more or less get along in German. Really, I can. But...
Possibly because the pub was for some reason playing the greatest indie rock hits of the late-90s (?!) I got to thinking about the time I was in grad school in the UK, and one day sort of on a whim walked into a FlightCentre and asked how much it would cost to fly home to Seattle for the weekend. And the tickets were really cheap, so I bought one. Just to have a break from the constant struggle with boredom and loneliness that was my life. And that moment, I think, was the beginning of the end of my time in England. I'd worked hard at being a student on the bleeding edge of the London suburbs: I'd learned to find my way around, made one or two friends, tried to find something at work that I didn't feel hopelessly incompetent at... - and I did see the thing through to the end. Because Making It Work is what I do. But so much of it was a struggle, and a bad fit, and work for work's sake. Did some good come out of me hacking my way through that degree? I hope so. Was it "worth it"? Seems unlikely. Who knows?
Things are different now, and the same. The same because again I'm hacking my way through something, and why? Different because I'm not just responsible for myself any more. And I don't really have a "home" to go back to, at least not in the same way. So, onwards, I guess?
Don't forget to pray today.
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