Calatorie in America

I flew back from America two weeks ago, and boy are my wings tired. (Ba-dum, shish.)

When I joined the Peace Corps in June 2005, I told myself I wasn't going to return to America until my full two years of service were up. I had a lot of reasons: I wanted to vacation in this part of the world as much as possible, I didn't want to experience the comforts of America for a full two years, I was worried that I wouldn't want to return to Moldova if I visited America, and I wanted the first time I stepped back on American soil to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment. I wanted to earn my American life back with two full years in Moldova.

After a year and a half of service, I had changed my opinion. I was no longer attached to the idea of returning home "a conquering hero," mostly because it didn't make a difference in my friends' minds back home; they just wanted to see me. I also was no longer worried that I would want to quit my job when I saw America again; I've become far too busy and have too many responsibilities and unfinished business here, so there's no way I could possibly leave. I also wasn't worried about experiencing the comforts of America, because I had experienced them in England during my summer vacation and, honestly, hadn't found them that appealing.

The biggest reason, however, was that my other vacation ideas fell through. My possible trip to Pakistan fell through first, when my Pakistani friend from college said that her job would keep her from taking vacation during my break. Then other ideas, which included Spain and Morocco on one trip and Romania and Bulgaria on another trip fell through because I couldn't find people to go with. So in early December I called my parents and asked "if it would be okay" for me to come home for the holidays. Surprise, surprise; they bought my ticket within days.

Flying from Chisinau to Frankfurt to San Francisco didn't take too long, especially since I had something to look forward to on the other end. As we flew low enough over California to see the cities, I noticed how many football and baseball fields there are in America. In the Bay Area, at least, it looked like there was one every few blocks. By comparison, the one sports field within six kilometers of me in Moldova is a soccer field with no nets on the metal posts and grass trimmed by cows and goats.

I arrived in San Francisco and claimed my luggage, very happy that neither the two plastic bottles full of house wine nor the glass bottle of cognac had burst in my bag. (Another volunteer during Christmas vacation broke a bottle of Jim Beam in his bag during his return trip to Moldova, making all of his clothes reek of whiskey.) I exited customs and saw my dad.

A funny thing happened when I saw my dad for the first time in over nine months; it felt completely normal. It was not the momentous event that I thought it would be. In fact, nothing about the drive home, seeing my parents, meeting the new dog (and calling her by the old dog's name), seeing some of my friends for the first time in 18 months or seeing my sister for the first time in six months felt out of the ordinary. I was home. End of story. I did, however, get a little overeager sharing my house wine with family and friends that night; the alcohol and my jet lag exhaustion combined to make life very interesting when my dad and I went to the airport later that evening to pick up my sister from her flight.

I had already gotten my family some Moldovan knickknacks for Christmas, but I had to scramble on the 23rd to get them something a little bigger. I went to a Barnes and Noble bookstore and picked a few books for family members. A sales lady was helping me when I turned to my friend and said, "Maybe I should get my sister the new O.J. book."

"They're not publishing it," the sales lady said.

"No? Oh, that's good," I said.

"Yeah, they decided not to about a week ago," she said. "Don't you read the papers?"

"Well, no," I said with a smile. "I've been living in Eastern Europe for the past 18 months and I got home yesterday." I had been waiting to use that line.

Christmas went smoothly, and on the 26th, my family and I hosted a welcome home party. About 15 friends came, and everyone had a shot-glass full of my house wine as they entered the party, just like at any good Moldovan party. I played my friends music by Zdob si Zdub, Parazitii, Ian Raiburg and Cleopatra Stratan, while they showed me a particular present-related Saturday Night Live digital short.

Being with family and friends seemed perfectly normal. Driving seemed perfectly normal, too, although I was more likely to take a walk somewhere around town than I would have been two years ago. Some things, however, seemed strange:

• When I went to the ATM, people in line stood nearly 10 feet behind me. In Moldova, I've come to expect nothing more than a three-foot bubble. Once, I even had to yell at two little girls to back off.


• The Department of Motor Vehicles was actually a pleasurable experience. My paperwork for renewing my driver's license was processed quickly, and there was a computer-based queue that everyone respected. The woman at the desk greeted me and smiled. She was also the only clerk who had car registration stickers to put on license plates, so my process was constantly interrupted by people coming up and getting the proper stickers. In Moldova, I would be expected to accept this. At the DMV, the woman apologized and said she was sorry I had gotten stuck with her.


• It took me a couple days for me to not automatically tune in to a conversation any time I heard someone speaking English. In Moldova, hearing English means you instantly have something in common with a person. In America, it means you've found one of the 300 million people in the country who speak English. Not quite as special.


• When I went to Fry's Electronics, I heard conversations in all sorts of languages, including Spanish and several Asian languages. I had gotten used to listening for only Romanian and Russian.


• My friend Ross and I went to a local burger joint and walked up to the outside ordering window. Another guy was waiting for his order, and he struck up a conversation with Ross about how much he had drank the night before and how much he needed the fast food to help his hangover. I couldn't believe how strange the guy was, just coming up and talking to us. After he left, I turned to Ross. "Do you know that guy?"
  "No," Ross said.
  "So why did you talk to him?" I asked, perplexed.
  "Because he started talking, and he seemed like a nice guy."
  I had forgotten that I had been like that two years ago, too. So open. So friendly. Not so much anymore.


• I had forgotten what it was like to be carded while buying alcohol. Just for fun, I attempted to use my Moldovan green card as identification nearly everywhere I bought alcohol. It worked in four of the five establishments where I used it. It was only rejected at the San Jose Arena during a hockey game. When I bought some beer (imported Baltica, of course) from a liquor store, the girl at the counter didn't even blink at it. After I had paid, I said, "That ID is actually a green card from an Eastern European country."
  "I know," she said. "I'm a security officer at my other job, so I know what these look like."
  "I'm impressed," I said. "So are these easy to counterfeit?"
  "OH yeah," she said with a bit of a laugh. "But I know all seven places to check it to make sure it's real."
  Молодеца девушка.

After a great New Year's party at which both of my hip-hop alter-egos, MO$' BLING and MC Saracie, performed, I got back on the plane on January 2nd. Little did I know that a huge storm had hit Moldova, knocking out power and phone lines to most of southern Moldova (including my village) and complicating landing procedures at the Chisinau airport. During my flight from Frankfurt to Chisinau, a stewardess announced only that there was "bad weather in Chisinau" and that we were landing in Bucharest. After she offered no other details, I raised my hand and asked her what we would do after landing in Bucharest. Were we going to sit on the runway? Were we going to get on a 12-hour bus ride to Chisinau? Were we going to stay the night in a hotel? The flight attendant told me that I shouldn't ask questions and in the course of our ensuing discussion, she told me that I had been poorly raised ("Nu aveti sapte ani de acasa," for you Romanian speakers). Even though we still had six hours of sitting on the Bucharest runway ahead of us, I knew then and there that I had arrived back "home" in Moldova.