Mission to the Czech Republic

There’s always been humor in my family. It’s one of the best parts about coming home. We sit around the dinner table, probably one of the last families in America to do so, for a mealtime full of witty banter and good-humored mockery. It usually starts off with my dad telling a story from work, of some unusual copilot or, more likely, some embarrassing situation he found himself in. This undoubtedly leads to reminiscing of other past humiliations, whether it be the time he clung for dear life to a wildly spasming tree trunk he’d tied himself to, running chainsaw in hand, or the time he repeatedly called our interior decorator by her first and last name combined into one. This time, my mother was recounting in disbelief that my father, upon being asked to take our old magazines to the recycling center, had managed to come home with more magazines that he’d left with, collected straight from the 4ft x 6ft dumpster. “I mean, why would you get a subscription?! They must have hundreds you can choose from!” He did have a point. He was also banned from recycling duty.
Dad’s never been much for admitting mistakes. He’s an intelligent person (I suppose you have to be to obtain an electrical engineering degree and a pilot’s license) but it doesn’t seem to cross his mind that intelligent and infallible are not the same thing. Occasionally the story comes up of how he’d never heard the phrase “my bad” because, well, nothing is ever his bad. The following night, as we enjoyed dinner on the back deck, I was nervously going over possible interview questions I could face the next day. Of course everyone was keen to offer their own suggestions, and before we knew it we had launched into a role play of what a hypothetical interview with Dad would have been like:
Q: What would you consider some of your strengths?
Dad: How much time you got buddy? Anyone need a coffee break before we get started?
Q: How about your weaknesses?
Dad: …………(silence)………………(blank stare)………..
We could, of course, never get by without his infinite wisdom and wit. After all, it was him who wrote out in neat bullet-pointed steps just exactly how to apply for/sign up for/buy/whatever it is you actually do/ a CD at the bank. Zach and I marched into our local Wachovia, proudly prepared to do something that requires a certain level of responsibility and knowledge; thank goodness Dad prepared us:
Bank guy: So, you’d like to buy some CDs…
Me: (glancing quickly at the paper in Zach’s hand) yes…
Bank guy: ok…so we’ve got a couple of options…
Zach: yes, we’d like the, uh (looks down)…the one at 4.25%...at…uh….
Bank guy: …….(raised eyebrow)….you reading this?
Both: ….er, yes…
Yes, in spite of slight embarrassments that come with reintegrating back into America, or the good-hearted bickering that goes on at my house, what can I say? It’s good to be home.

I blinked and all of a sudden I'm in America again. I'm not really sure what happened. The decision was nothing at all like it was last year, when I was internally tormented while analysing the long-term impacts of such a choice. The only resemblance is that, again, it took only two weeks for me to change my mind. I didn't think I'd be back so soon. I fell in love with Prague. I lived with great flatmates in a fabulous flat (which we fondly referred to as "Fricova Palace"), a decent job, and the best friends I could ask for from just about every country. There was no shortage of adventure and excitement, even if my life did reflect that of an exhausted workaholic most of the time.

I think it was the first time when I ever just...lived. I could just "be." There was no internal push to become better, which was new territory for me. I finally learned to just enjoy myself and the life around me, whether it was work or friends or the city. I didn't feel disappointed because I hadn't reached some quota of countries I wanted to visit during the year (although I did manage to hit Croatia, Slovenia, and Turkey right there at the end), and I didn't always feel like I had to participate in everything there was to do. I could stay home every night for a week and for the first time in my life, not feel guilty for missing out on a church small group meeting or for not reading some deep, intellectual novel trying to "improve" myself. I'd just plop down on my bed and watch two hours of Scrubs, and usually I'd be offered dinner by my flatmate John, or Jana and I would stay up and chat in the kitchen over some red wine. And I was amazed at how people responded to this! When I left I was overwhelmed at the outpouring of emails and calls and letters from people saying how much they'd miss me, how much I'd affected them this year and how much I'd meant to them. Me?? Despite the fact that I can be moody, selfish, and about a hundred other undesireable qualities, they liked me anyway. It's a massive weight off of my life to finally understand I don't have to strive to be the perfect at everything, the "perfect Christian." Maybe I'm way off on this, but it did feel good to be able to say out loud "I really don't like that person" but continue to try and love them anyway, rather than to tell everyone "yeah, they're really not so bad. I like them." It was such a load of bull. Everyone knows it. Just be honest, for once. God, it's refreshing to feel some honesty.

However, I now find myself back in America, getting ready to start a new job, and wondering if I made the right decision. Job-wise, I think I did, but I miss so many things about my life in Europe. I fear that to be successful in this job, I'll have to revert back to my old ways of obsessive perfection. Prague was so easy-going, yet productive at the same time; I'd finally found a good balance, so what on earth am I doing back here?

Surely it can't be as bad as I imagine. In the meantime, I'm going to do exactly what I did when I came home from Spain: cling to every piece of life that reminds me of Prague, while at the same time trying not to start sentences with "Well, when I was in Prague," and talk about how I've exhausted Youtube's listing of Divojke Bill videos. Just like right now.