That isn’t to say I haven’t had my emotional outbursts and long sobbing phone calls home (Sue Leyshon can tell you all about them), but the mathematical ratio of me living away from home to me desperately craving home looks something like this:
Now that I’ve reached the sage old age of my mid-twenties, I’m starting to question my self-proclaimed international citizenship. America is starting to look more and more appealing, looming on the horizon of my future, where the nuances of daily conversation are not lost on me, where it is possible to take my car everywhere, where I can easily spend the evening or the holidays with my family, where I don’t have to boil my water to drink it, and where I can find a job based on my actual skills and not only my native ability to string together a fluent English sentence.
But somewhere along that line of reasoning, I begin to feel like a failure. Why can’t I overcome all those natural weaknesses bred into me as an American and thoroughly adopt my heartier, cross-cultural persona? Does having been born an American really mean I am only fit to live in America?
So I began tallying up what makes life in Russia so different from the life I know at home. Yes, the roads are horrendous here (but Russians take perverse pride in hearing that Russian roads are worse than American roads; it proves their toughness. There is an aphorism here, about Russia’s two biggest troubles: Roads and Fools.) Yes, people drink openly on the streets at all hours of the day, even though it is against the law, but as I am frequently reminded, Russia is a free country. Yes, Russian don’t often smile at strangers or in pictures, their outer demeanor is originally prickly, but that is simply a shell. I have shared uncountable glasses of tea with kind and generous people here.
Despite these mostly superficial differences, what Russia is lacking for me are the friends and family that have shaped my personality, even the wanderlust side of me. And that is something, that no matter how devout an expat I resolve to be, I can never replace.
**My title comes from a Ragamuffin Band song called "You did not have a home." Beautiful words about a beautiful view of faith.