The Three Month Slump?

These days my emotions are all over the place and I’m feeling a bit bipolar.  I’m pretty sure the dreaded “three month slump” is the cause.  The three month slump is known in ex-pat communities as the point (usually about 3-4 months in) when you realize you’re not on vacation in this new country, you actually live here now.  Trust me, it’s a shocking day when you realize this…even on your second ex-pat assignment.  It means your problems, your confusion, and even your bewilderment, are not going away.  It may diminish, but it’s part of your life now.  People experience this slump to different degrees and for various lengths of time, but almost everybody goes through a period of losing their energy, enthusiasm, and tolerance for the new place they call home.

The good news is that once you come out on the other side of the slump, you even out and find “your” place in your new home.  For me, I recognize the signs of the slump in a variety of ways.  My enthusiasm for speaking the language has dwindled to almost nothing…I do my homework at the last possible minute before I draaag myself to the class.  And no matter how much I promise myself I’m going to study this week, I don’t manage it (yet I watch three crap movies on TV…)

I go to bed early despite having many things to do, and I'm the night owl!  I hesitate to communicate with friends and family back home because it feels like I will just complain, and who wants to hear that?  

And I get impatient when things don’t work the way I think they “should,” i.e. the way they work in America.  For the first few months it was easy to say to myself, “this is the way it works here” and just move on.  No longer. 

I want to tear my hair out when I go to the store to buy something and they are inexplicably out of it.  And I’m not talking about hard to find items…last week red and yellow peppers were on my grocery list.  This is an item that every store here carries, so planning a dinner that includes this is not usually a problem.  (Unlike a dinner of Mexican food where you know you’re going to multiple places to assemble all the ingredients.) 

First I was at Carrefour (big grocery store chain) and they had none.  I looked around three times because I was so perplexed.  Next I was at Wellcome (smaller grocery chain) and they were also out.   It was too late in the day for the local fruit and veg market (think permanent farmer’s market), but I stopped at a little fruit and veg store.  Nope.  At this point I am starting to rethink my menu for that night’s meal and I’m flat-out cranky because can I think of plan B?  Nope.  I walk past a little French bistro-type place and rather accidentally see that they have two beautiful peppers in a tiny cooler in their store.  Eureka!  I pop in and happily buy them, but I’m thinking to myself, “Should it be this hard to buy two peppers???”

A few weeks ago, having to go to 4 stores to buy peppers for dinner would have been a funny story to tell Joe when he got home.  Now it’s a source of frustration and annoyance…this is definitely the three month slump.   I know that getting through it is a matter of gutting it out and continuing to do the things you know will help you, even though you don’t want to.  So I go to Chinese class, I meet new people, I email old friends, I go to the gym, I use caffeine to get me going, I think about our vacation to Bali over Chinese New Year….and I absolutely cherish the good days when they come.

Some wonderful things have happened that sent me flying high as a kite.  One day I had an impromptu coffee with a woman who I don’t know very well but we play tennis together. Over the course of the conversation, I was honest and vulnerable about how hard this adjustment is, and she opened up about the same thing and we had an amazing and hilarious talk.  Two hours later I left the coffee shop feeling like a million bucks…it’s so simple, but there is almost nothing as good as a genuine connection with another person.  And later that day someone else told me she read my last blog and had similar feelings around adjustment.  She was grateful for my words because it expressed and validated what she was feeling.  Wow, something I wrote resonated with someone else, what a great feeling.  (And possibly confirms that I'm not insane.)

And then there was the day Genevieve got her mid-term exam scores back.  Oh my God, the kid absolutely nailed it.  She had five exams over 2 days, and going into it we were very clear that 50% is the bar, trying again to manage her expectations.   

Here were her scores:  Social Studies 100%, Science 93%, English 96%, Math 85%, Chinese 65%.  When she told me she got 100% on her social studies test, she was grinning so much she couldn’t tell me about the rest of the test scores.  She just had to spin around on the sidewalk letting her happiness flow out.  J  When I asked what her Social Studies teacher said about the score (her SS teacher previously told her she should be doing better in the class) she told me, “I have no idea what she said, I was smiling so much I couldn’t hear anything.”  J  I LOVE everything about that statement.  I walked three feet above the sidewalk the rest of the day and took the girls out to G’s favorite restaurant to celebrate.

And just yesterday, out of the blue, I got an unexpected message on Facebook from a friend saying she was just thinking of me and missed me.  Just like that, I am back in a place of peace and thankfulness for the blessing of solid friendships and communities back home, as well as the blessing of new friendships and adventures here.

It’s a bipolar kind of life right now!