More and more, it just seems normal to live here.
As we are able to communicate and understand more, it makes life here manageable and “right.”
Usually, it’s small things that happen that make us feel normal. For instance…when you order deli meat in America they show you how thick it is and try to get it just right for you. When we first ordered meat here, we just did what we saw others doing…just taking what they gave us. Sometimes it was really thick, sometimes it was more normally sliced. Other people didn’t really seem to care so we assumed that you just didn’t ask. Well yesterday, I had had enough. I wanted the lunch meat I was buying to be a certain way. Armed with some new words, I asked the lady to slice it very thinly. She smiled and said “of course” (in Russian, naturally). Then she showed me and I asked for it to be a little bit thinner and she adjusted it and showed me again. And she seemed pleased that it was perfect. Seven months of just accepting lunch meat like it was given to us…when all along, we just had to ask.
That’s a rather silly example, but it’s the way it is here…living in a completely new culture where you don’t know the “rules.” Everything is new and everything is a lesson. Yeah lunch meat is a small thing…but when you add all these small things up, they sometimes can be overwhelming.
Day by day — moment by moment — life is stabilizing. We probably have made it sound like no big deal, but honestly it has been really hard, lonely, and sometimes depressing being so far from what used to be home. But truthfully, this really is home now.
There’s no place like home.
Blessing the name of the Lord!