reverse culture shock

There really ought to be a better way to explain the feelings that apparently inevitably come upon returning to native soil. Upon arriving in a foreign country, i never feel like i am shocked by the different-ness. i'm more overwhelmed, and it comes on usually quite slowly. maybe they should call it culture-whelmed.
But being back! whoa! it all just came racing back! Every minute, from the time i sat down at the gate in Berlin. Is that an American accent? Why does Newark airport suck so much? How on earth did i go from an apartment in Berlin to doing my laundry in Riker's basement in less than 12 hours?
Sometimes I think traveling by boat across the ocean was sort of the right idea. It seems so strange and so wrong that i could go from having tea in my own kitchen to navigating the public transport system in a foreign city in one day, and then from an apartment in Berlin with friends from all over the world to doing laundry and eating dinner in a Jersey town that usually feels all too familiar.

I think I will attempt to recap my trip a little later on...
For now I'll just say a few things about yesterday.
I went to Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey to have what I guess could be called an interview. The interview portion went like this: I know how you work, I know that you're good and i can trust you, we pretty much just need you to talk to the money guy about what would be a reasonable amount of pay for you. He also said he's got another guy to interview, which i am grumping about but i suppose is pretty acceptable since i don't even know if i want to take the job yet.
So. The plan is, in the next month i will be preparing to either move back to jersey and work at STNJ, which would be a job that would continue until december. OR i will be looking into jobs teaching at a montessori school in one of the small handful of cities i hear calling my name. (ie, going west) and hopefully signing up to WWOOF and spend my summer doing that. Which do i want? I don't know. The second one sounds more exciting, and more challenging. If i was to go back to STNJ, i am determined that despite being sort of back at the starting line again, i would make it a totally new experience. It would be a position with far more responsibility than i have had with them before, and i would be able to learn a lot. It's a little scary, actually, to think of how much responsibility i would be taking on with that job, which i think is why it appeals so much. I'm so ready to be challenged again. The thing that scares me is that i feel like my brain always goes all or nothing with theatre. Or maybe that's the nature of the beast, you can't be a theatre person halfway. I always think i sound like a wannabe/hasbeen when i talk about theatre while working my lame-o job at B&N. But being in theatre brain, i have trouble wrapping my head around my other interests, like teaching and traveling and volunteering, all things that are incredibly important to me.

And on the topic of being at Drew...which wasn't at all the topic, but i was there...
How weird! It was nice, too. Nice that i hardly knew the students, but also nice that when talking to professors, there was no need for background, they are my background. I mention that i was visiting morgan, and they say, oh it's nice that you two are still in touch [after your breakup]<--that last part was silent, but it was there. And i agree! It is nice that we are still in touch after our breakup. I'm glad we're friends now.

I'll finish out this ramblefest with something I told Morgan yesterday, and Lex for that matter.
This trip to Europe? It was the best, most anxiety free and wonderfully exciting trip I have ever taken to the other side of the Atlantic. It was, I believe, a combination of good people and the right mentality on my part. As I said to Elena a few days ago, something about being with the right people makes the good times better, and makes the bad times not so bad. I want to remember every minute of this trip, because the good times were great, and the bad times passed quickly and painlessly.
And so, to Elena, Oleg, Ania, and Filip, thanks for an amazing trip. I hope i see you soon.