The Land of Enchantment

Culture shock’s a bitch. When you dive into a new culture, everything is new and unfamiliar and a blur of faces and names and symbols seem to blow past your peripheral in the first few days of being abroad. It’s exciting, but exhausting. You know what’s even more exhausting? Reverse culture shock (the term used for re-adjusting to home after being abroad); it sneaks up on you, luring you home with love and warmth, then cutting your well-traveled feet out from under you, making you wish for the familiar, distant world of ulcer-causing food and constant misunderstandings. I’ve heard it described as a U-curve. At first, being home is exciting as you parade around, seeing all the people you’ve missed, eating at your favorite restaurants and catching up on the important news and gossip. Then starts the suck. You don’t fit into the box you once fit into. Strange words pop into your head, and sometimes a foreign phrase fits a situation so much better than English. But you can’t say that phrase without seeming like a pretentious asshole. You miss people and events from your ‘other life’ on the other side of the world. Time zones and international calling fees don’t help the fact.

In the 13 months I’ve been away, very little has changed in Farmington, New Mexico. In the 13 months I’ve been away, everything has changed.

It was the supermarkets that first took me off guard. I spent my first couple days back in America walking around various supermarkets and convenience stores in awe of the selections, flavors, and new products. There are SO many!!!! It’s a lot to process when your mind has been in survival mode for so long. “Okay, I think I saw a crinkled bag of chips in the back of that supermarket. If we borrow some cheese from the café and put them in the toaster oven, we’ll have something that resembles nachos. OMG I’m excited!”

I know, I know. Anyone who has traveled the distance with me knows that my incessant whining about missing the comforts of home while in China cannot possibly result in any sympathy for the struggles of adjusting to home. After all, Zhongshan and Farmington can’t be THAT different, can they? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, where the hell is Farmington, anyway?

When I go somewhere unfamiliar in this world, New Mexico is known only as “the meth place” thanks to the popular Albuquerque-set TV series, Breaking Bad. But let me tell you- it’s not just “the meth place”. It’s the meth place and so much more.

Farmington, New Mexico is a town of just under 50,000 people and lies 15 minutes east of the Navajo reservation. If you drive an hour north or west, you’ll find yourself in a new state. This is an oil field town with high desert landscapes and old money. It’s home to the Pinion Hills golf course, which amazingly stays green in the middle of the desert. We have our own “Harvard on the hill”, San Juan College, where I’m signed up for two classes this fall.

Farmington hasn’t been completely stagnant since I left. This little town has imported a few more chain restaurants, including a Freddy’s Steakburger fast-food joint and a Buffalo Wildwings, a new place to grab a brew and watch a game. This adds to the two other bars in town, 3 Rivers Brewery and the regional airport bar where once, in college I took my shirt off in order to win a competition and $250 (I won……..and lost).

Coming back to a place like Farmington is kind of like going back 20 years to a time when leaving the country was abnormal and you couldn’t say ‘fuck’ in public without getting dirty looks. There are no taxis and you have to make the hour drive north to Colorado if you want to talk to someone who believes that organic farms and recycling are beneficial to the earth.

Yes, Farmington is a gem of a place. And it’s my home again for the next year. Again, I know what you’re thinking- But, Darrah, aren’t you going to that pretentious school for brilliant people out west because you were accepted for this fall because of your brilliance?

What I’m learning, slowly but surely, is that life doesn’t tend to bend over backwards to grant our every wish. I know…this shocked me, too. The humbling truth is that I need rest. My body and mind have been pounded into concrete for so long that I hit my final wall upon returning home. It took two trips to the emergency room for me to finally get the message that my body is sending: rest.

These days when people ask me what I do, the answer is complicated. “I just got back from a year in China” I hear myself neurotically justify. Then, in an attempt to be seen as a legitimate human being who just happens to live with her parents at the age of 24, I explain how I was PLANNING on going to graduate school but it didn’t work out. “So I’ll go next fall. Believe me! I WILL!! I’ll go….You JUST WATCH! I WILL!!!” I scream, as the stranger I just met uncomfortably wishes she hadn’t asked.

Despite my neurosis, I know being here is the right choice for me right now. And I know epic things will happen this year….eventually. So here I am. In good ol’ Farmington…..resting and breathing the desert air into my nostrils (a nice change from China smog). For now, it’s an enchanting place to be.

NM sunset. Photo cred https://lookingglassstories.wordpress.com