Juicy

I have been living in Oman for almost one month. I think it takes about a month in a new setting for a paradigm shift to occur in one’s perception of their unfamiliar surroundings. Over a period of about one month, the fast paced excitement and blinding opportunity of a new place can sluggishly drift into dim, albeit not dark, reality. In other words, my experience is no longer a vacation and I can perceive it. Work, as it always manages to do… has meticulously labored its way in to my string of adrenaline packed adventures and destroyed my ability to just pack a light backpack on a Monday afternoon and go out looking for an adventure. Essentially, life has set in. It probably flopped into my lap like a dead fish as soon as school started two weeks ago, but I was still backpacking around for a good sushi place and didn’t bother to do anything with what was right in front of me. I still haven’t found a sushi place in Oman but that’s not the point. I’m actually living here now. Waking up, eating, schooling myself and getting schooled in the classroom, eating, exercising, doing homework, eating, doing homework, talking with my family in America (“In Islam, entrance to heaven is written on the foot of the mother.”-‘Shama’) at least once a week… and finally going to bed. Repeat. Repeat. Not a bad way to live, not at all. I’m still learning more in one day than I could grasp in three and I have a lot to look forward to in the coming week. But recently, I have had to stow the drip-control for my adrenaline reserves and buckle down. Laundry, dishes, studying, staying healthy, studying, they’re here now… and as Lil Wayne put it so parsimoniously, “…and I’m grindin’ until I’m tired this, and you ain’t grindin’ until you tired, so I’m grindin’ with my eyes wide, lookin’ to find a way through the day, a life for the night.” And that’s just it, I want to get as much out of this experience as I can…not just based on the schedule I was given when I got off the plane, but throughout every minute of every day in every experience I encounter no matter how minute it seems… even if that means sacrificing adventure in the desert for information in the classroom… and I’ll rest when I’m dead.
I have begun to accept the historically boring as thrillingly educational. I can see my Arabic paying off!! I still take issue with the kind of Arabic that I’m being taught but I’ve gotten over chiming in like a grandfather clock in a cab full of beeping Omani wristwatches. Strangers definitely understand me and I’m able to conjugate verbs in past, present and future almost instantaneously. The precious little sliver of this fascinating lexicon that I have managed to get a hold of is currently landscaping the deserted linguistic peaks and valleys of my brain laying literal verbal foundations and paving the way for my future communicative endeavors (every verb in Arabic has a root and a pattern that it shares with like-minded verbs, most words are alike in that they have the same “foundational” stem or ‘root letters’ this all ads to the idea that Arabic is a logical language.) If you want to learn something difficult, do it every day.
Similarly, I have adopted an old Buddhist proverb to aide in the absorption of my fact based studies as well as the recollection of more subjective lectures and experiences. “The palest ink is worth more than the keenest memory.” I refuse to let my experience here wash over me in hopes that I will leave with a cleaner and more polished view of Oman. No, no, no. Reflection is key. Whether I am dealing with a text, a movie, a speaker, or a road sign, I write everything down on paper. Perspective and fairness are only achieved with patient contemplation. Such patience cannot be properly allocated in space and time without notes to reference. Humans get distracted and forget. As much as I want to believe that hearing, seeing or reading something once will resound in the hollow corridors of my mind for longer than it takes me to enjoy a delectable Arabic, or Turkish or Indian shwarma filled with tasty chicken morsels spiced with traditional goodness and special Istanbuly sauce, slightly grilled and pressed to perfection with a side of roasted vegetables and French fries served hot and ready to eat…get my point. The written word is valuable. It can withstand time like no other reasonable construction and thus is the greatest informer to use, ex post facto. I have hand written journals to go along with each and every post…scribbled notes, sketches, streams of consciousness… a plethora of pages to be deciphered in the directors cut of this blog.
A mentor of mine once said, “when you squeeze an orange…juice comes out…and the same thing happens when YOU get squeezed.” Essentially, when the pressure is on, you see what you are made of. Travelling abroad to study in the Middle East is an experience riddled with high-velocity and high-pressure situations. Language barriers, cultural divides, subconscious tendencies that collide with societal expectations and a gamut of misunderstandings serve to make time here both stress full and rewarding. With that being said, culture shock is a real phenomenon. It occurs during various types and durations of trips broad and at various stages. Kalervo Oberg, in his article “Culture Shock,” defines the internal strife as… “(A)n occupational disease of people who have been suddenly transplanted abroad.” He claims that, “Culture Shock is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse.” Travelling abroad to Oman has been a bit of a culture shock. However, like most things in life, it’s not how hard you fall… but how you can keep yourself from falling in the same place twice that matters…and how high you get or jump. Studies abroad are as much about gaining knowledge on a specific region of the world as they are about learning how to deal with Culture Shock. Developing a set of skills to keep your self grounded, as well as tolerant while maintaining a lust to learn are positive methodologies that can be applied to every aspect of one’s life. Taking risks that allow me to navigate Omani culture, learning to be aware of myself and of my surroundings, using the Arabic language, and most importantly taking personal responsibility for my learning experience are just a few skills that I’m currently working on. Guess and test is really the only way to find out what works, this involves a bit of embarrassment, a little failure, and touch of humility to brew an unparalleled self-confidence. Drop someone thousands of miles from home and place a few rigorous and time-consuming expectations on them…and the juice flows.