I am studying communications at the University of Phoenix Online and the course I am currently in is dealing with interpersonal communications. This week, we will be dealing specifically with cultural barriers to interpersonal communication. One of the week’s resources is to watch a series of interviews with people from different cultures talking about their integration into the community the now live in and how it differs from what they call “home” originally. One of those videos is the inspiration for my post today.

I posted this photo on my Google+ profile today. My post said that I’d forgotten what awesome photos I used to take and I said where this photo was taken. Years and what seems like a lifetime ago, I took this photograph on the coast of Jamaica, on the Palisadoes strip, just outside of the Norman Manley International Airport. The photo is from a different time in my life. I was my own woman then and no one else’s. I had already met hubby I think, but the relationship at that point was not yet formalized into anything other than a fascination. Neither of us had any clue we would end up where we are today.

The day I took the photo, I was out with friends on a fishing expedition. If I remember correctly, this was the day I caught my first fish. A tiny little thing that I threw back in almost immediately so that it would be able to breathe and continue to live. I was a hardcase. People called me “bitch”. But I could not catch a fish and let it die.

I worked in the corporate world and I earned enough to be comfortable on my own. Internet was a staple. I had ditched my TV cable service a couple of years before because I rarely watched TV and anything I wanted to watch I could get on disc and watch from my player. Or just watch on my computer.

There was no such thing as worrying about credit ratings. You paid your bills so that you would not have a disruption of service. You tried not to get into too much debt because banks charged exorbitant interest rates on credit cards. Debit cards had recently (within the previous 10 years, that is) become the latest convenience yet quite a few merchants still did not accept your debit card for purchases.

Cell phones plans could be had on a prepaid basis and all cell phones available were sold at a subsidized rate. Phones were “locked” to a network because that network had possibly invested money in importing your phone and wanted to ensure they got your money from calls as well as. “Unlocking” of phones was possible, but only if you wanted to travel abroad and slip a foreign carrier’s SIM card into your phone whilst you were abroad.

The beach was taken for granted. It would always be there, so I didn’t feel the need to visit it that often. Every chance I got, however, I drove north out of the city just for the hell of it. There was nothing I loved more than a road trip to the countryside – especially if it took me into the cool interior of the country.

Coconut water was most certainly not taken for granted. I would order a gallon a week and it would be finished in a matter of days.

Life was good. I wasn’t happy, but I was satisfied.

Fast forward 6 years. I am sitting in my “office” – the middle bedroom of a 3 bedroom house – in Olympia, Washington. It’s freezing outside. We had some snow today – the kind that is really just frozen rain but it looks white. Hubby lit the wood stove twice today but the house is still cold. I am wrapped in a blanket, doing schoolwork at 4am and writing – something I would never have dared to do in Jamaica since Monday morning meant work at 8am. Now, to go to work, I simply have to open a browser window.

We are bound by the military. Well hubby is. I can leave for Jamaica anytime I want; hubby can’t. Even if he could, it just isn’t in the budget. Contrary to popular belief, money does not grow on trees here – much to my consternation.

There is no coconut water. Well, none like I have ever tasted anyway. The ones I have sampled are bland and tasteless and no matter how good it is for my now soaring blood pressure, I refuse to drink them.

There is no beach of the likes we have in Jamaica. No such thing as gentle surf, white sands, coconut water and blue waters. Here, the beaches are grey and rough and freezing cold.

Here you pay your bills or you’ll never get another credit card, loan, or checking account ever again.

Cell phones are subsidized so long as you commit to 2 year agreements to continue service with the carrier … otherwise you pay an exorbitant amount of money to go somewhere else.

I am ecstatically happy but life is much different from it was in Jamaica; more restrictive.

Americans don’t know how to make you feel at home in their country. There are constant reminders that I am not from here and while I could care less about those who choose to hold that against me, it is still something you will never have to encounter as a Jamaican in Jamaica. I tell everyone the reason why I love Washington so much, and in particular the Seattle/Tacoma area, is that I feel less out-of-place here than I have felt in any other place in the United States – and I have been to many places in New York, D.C., Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Maryland. Here, I feel less like a black girl married to a white man and more like Camille than I have since I left my home in Jamaica.

‘Farin’ not so wonderful unless you can find that one thing (or person) who makes you happy. If it weren’t for hubby, I think I’d be on the first plane back home to Jamaica. I hate the heat, but I hate feeling out-of-place more.

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The last 7 weeks have been arguably the worst of my life.

I commented on Facebook on Saturday morning that the year April 2010 through March 2011 was easy compared to the last 7 weeks and my BFF pointed out that it was the most personally revealing statement I have ever made on Facebook. He may be right. I make it a point to keep my personal life exactly that … personal. This is something I’ve always tried to do – with varying degrees of success. However, the trials of the last 7 weeks makes me feel like I need to express it out loud and in public that I’ve been through the figurative wars and I survived and can smile again in spite of it all.

The year while hubby was in Afghanistan was easy because all I had to worry about for the entire year was keeping myself occupied. I got myself involved in a ton of interests that kept my days and nights full for a whole year with little or no focus on the self. I worried about the basic stuff I might have worried about were I still single and living on my own. The difference this time around was that there was PLENTY to worry about and occupational diversion was not an option. Coupled with the fact the hubby was on the same continent, but still too far away, and so soon after being gone a world away for a year, it was an unholy mess.

Hubby left for training in Missouri on January 1st. Immediately thereafter I discovered something that had me anxious for exactly 5 weeks until that “something” was no more. And to be even more cryptic, that “something” was no more in the most dramatic of ways which included 2 emergency room visits and a 2-night stay in the hospital.

I have never had occasion to stay in a hospital, but I have to say that St. Peter’s in Olympia, WA is possibly the nearest thing to the perfect hospital experience I could imagine. For the most part, the nurses and doctors were empathetic and thorough; there were a few hours when I felt positively burdensome, but not for long. The food was possibly better than anything I’ve ever made for myself at home. And the room was quiet, adequate, and comfortable. I was impressed. I’ll always choose to go back there, if I can. Madigan Army Medical Center did not inspire any feelings of fondness in my mind at all; even if all I saw was the emergency room while it is under construction.

Anyway, to make a bad situation worse, on January 18th, the Pugent Sound area experienced one its worst winter storms ever. The damage is staggering. One of the things I love about this area is how they have managed to maintain the feel of the forest no matter where you go in the urban and sub-urban areas. Where we live felt like a single spot in the middle of nowhere when we moved here. It was difficult to even see our neighbours from the windows of our house. Now, I can see all the houses in the immediate vicinity. That is how badly the wooded areas have been denuded.

We lost power on Thursday the 19th in the afternoon. It wasn’t restored until the following week Wednesday. Luckily, I had friends who stole me away to stay with them whilst the power was restored, but the stress of the storm (being as close to nature as I feel at times) and not being home was palpable. Add to that the health issues and I have been a total mess for weeks.

Hubby returned last Friday night and in just 2 days he has managed to restore my spirit just by being here. I am both loathe and amazed to be able to admit that one person can have such a marked impact on my temperament and mood. Had you told me 10 years ago that I would be this dependent on another soul, I would have laughed you to scorn and maybe told you a few choice and unkind words to go along with it. That he is as dependent on me is heartening; I feel less pathetic than I would if he wasn’t. We make a good pair.

Sometimes, I really hate the army and what it continually does to families. This whole fiasco seemed ill-timed and ill-advised, even to my untrained eye. And while the shit was hitting the fan, I know I could have asked for hubby to be returned home to help me through it. What stopped me was knowing that the way the army works, if he were to stop in the middle of the course, he would have to start all over again with another 7 weeks at some later date. It seemed better for the big picture for him to just finish his course and come home at the end of it. I had all the practical resources necessary to care for my health, if not the emotional support I needed. I am willing to bet that were it any civilian employer, it would have been a no-brainer to bring him home without even having to ask. But … this is the life we live, and I walked into it with my eyes wide open. There are people who have had to endure far worse and I guess I have to be thankful that we are as strong as we are – because without that strength, this ordeal could have been our undoing.

Not many other military families have that strength, however. And I wonder if the powers that be will ever realize that morale is far more important than any other skill a soldier can be taught. The mission may be paramount, but the mission is moot unless you have soldiers to man it. And a soldier is only half of what he can be if his mind is at home with his family.

Find the balance. Please. Stop telling the spouses to let them go and find a way to make letting go easier.

Impossible you say?

To that I say: Nothing is impossible if you really give it some thought.

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It’s been overcast and rainy for about a week and a half now; interspersed with periods of sun briefly in the afternoons. It’s nice. I like the rainy, grey days mixed with the fine misting of raindrops on your forehead, cool temps and greenery all around.

I’ve been wondering whether I was going to have a serious problem with it being grey all the time, but so far so good.

Don’t get me wrong, now. I love the sun and I am very happy to see it when it peeps out every so often.

In Jamaica, it was an irritation unless you were at the beach. Speaking of which, I am finding that as much as I can smell the ocean here, I still miss Jamaican shores. Although that shouldn’t be surprising. I was born and raised in Jamaica. Sun is in my blood.

Why then should I be loving this place so much? I’ve been asking myself that each and every day since I first saw it last October when I visited my good friend Gail in Seattle for a few days.

I think it has more to do with the social aspects of the area than the weather. The weather is nice … Sure.

The REAL plus of this place, though, is that as an interracial couple, we get less stares than we have gotten anywhere else. Or at least it FEELS that way.  Maybe it’s that people are more friendly here. We get more “Hello” smiles than we’ve had anywhere else. In Texas, we just got stares, if anyone looked at all. In Kentucky, they mostly tried NOT to stare – and were pretty obvious about it. In Michigan, hubby’s hometown … While they don’t stare (or not stare), I stick out like a sore thumb. Literally.

Here, I just feel like there are FAR more interesting things to stare at than us … And no one really stares at the weird people – not really – because weird is normal here.

Hubby calls this state the hippy tree-hugging state. Actually, it kind of is. They’re so environmentally conscious here – all about recycling and bicycling and running/jogging and ‘park-and-ride’ing …

Yet despite all that … traffic is a B-I-T-C-H! Sunday afternoon on the I-5 can literally be a bumper-to-bumper experience. Yea – that happened to us.

Of course, I understand that its almost near impossible to live around here and not have a car. In fact, we went out and got me one since I felt so grounded all the time. But it’s still a little contradictory.

It doesn’t much matter if you live in the city – my friend Gail has a store and coffee shop and few restaurants within a block’s walk. But out here in the boonies … when the bus stop is about an hour’s walk and 20 minutes ride from home, and you have to do things like grocery shopping, etc … it just seems impossible to do without a car.

And cars are … Well, pollutants – no?

So much for environmentally friendly.

I so wish someone would come up with solar storage that is mobile and cheap…

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have gotten on-post housing. At least home would’ve been a few minutes away to bring the car home if I needed it. And then I bite my tongue and give myself a slap. On-post housing sucks – especially when they insisted on making us wait 6-8 weeks for a 2-bedroom house while 3-bedroom houses sit unused and available. And sounds as if that is the norm here too – empty 3-bedroom houses. How droll!

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#currents

I learned to drive on a 1971 Fiat 127.

The first time I got into the instructor’s car and drove up the street, he asked me “have you driven before?” Apparently, I was doing really well for a first- timer. Yet the only experience I had before that day was going through shifting motions on Mom’s Fiat and moving it around the driveway when she would allow me to.

“A natural” – my parents knew I’d be a serious driver from the day when I was 4 and ran out to meet Dad at the gate for a ride in when he got home from work. On this day, I gave into my urge to drive by putting his car into reverse from park. Dad was able to get to me and the car before it had traversed the whole roadway onto the opposite sidewalk.

I started official lessons early in the year – possibly February or March. I was taking the test in May or June. This I remember because I ALMOST had a clash with my exams and the driving test.

I managed to fail my driving test the first time around because despite bringing the car into  a parallel parking spot and positioning myself 6 inches from the wall and at equal distance at the front and rear bumper … I had hit the rear cone on my way into the spot.

Luckliy, I had done so well on the rest of the yard tests, that they determined when I came back to re-sit all I had to do was parallel park again and then do the road test – instead of starting over from scratch.

The second time around, I parked perfectly – albeit not as close to the wall.

The instructor almost failed me again on the road test – I was driving too fast. Test speeds were supposed to be 25mph – but I found myself hitting 35 and over very regularly. I think what won him over was that I looked fairly comfortable behind the wheel and was quite intimate with the road code (a lot of it is common sense, though, isn’t it? – I said.)

My first car, that was my own, wasn’t until a good 10 years or so later. With the help of my parents, I bought a Nissan Sunny. I remember feeling lucky because my Sunny had an advanced filtration system in the ceiling – clearly the previous owner had been a smoker – and the sales people hadn’t realized it was there until after the paperwork had been signed and therefore couldn’t charge me extra for it.

I’ve owned a few more cars since then – all of them ‘pre-owned’.

But yesterday, I became the first-time owner of a brand new car. Well, to be perfectly honest, the bank owns it and I am paying them to keep it parked in my driveway. But it’s still my name on the title. Hubby’s name is on it with me, but for all intents and purpose – it’s mine!

It’s a 2011 Suzuki SX4 Sport … It’s red (who knew?), manual transmission (6 speed), it’s comfy and it’s light … and I love it. Driving it from the dealership home (some 40-odd miles) wasn’t enough for me. I intend to take it out again ASAP.

Imagine that – I come to live in the United States and the first car I buy for myself is Japanese.

Heh – talk about back to my roots.

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No matter where I live, it seems I am to be plagued by Customs agents who have no common sense and no sense of respect for private property and no professionalism.

I asked my parents to send on some personal items to me and the best way we thought was to hold onto the items and once a complete box-full of stuff was ready to be shipped, to just send the box on via UPS.

Well

I was actually impressed that the box got here within 5 days – nevermind that the delivery guy took my outdoor mat (yes – THAT mat that we wipe our muddy, dirty feet on) and covered the box up outside the doorway. The first thing I noticed was that the box has been opened. Fine – I expected that considering it would have to come through customs to get to me… I expected them to open up to make sure my mother wasn’t sending me some drug or explosive or some other kind of contraband to sell or us … I get that.

So, I ignored that and opened up the box. Nothing was missing  – according to the inventory sheet Dad included, it was all there. Nice.

The ONE  item I REALLY wanted to get among them all was my old journal from Digicel – leather-bound and personalized with both my name and the company name. It had notes that I thought I’d want to have with me if I was going to continue in the Tech field. While flipping through, I noticed that the outside covers had 2 slits in identical locations – back and front. “Hmm”, I thought, “must have been packed badly and the hardcover books cos the old leather to crack and tear”.

I didn’t even think twice about it – I just went back to whatever it was I had been doing before. It wasn’t until hubby came home and I was showing it to him that I realized that the inside cover also had a slit in it … nay! a slit AND a TEAR!

As in, they sliced it open with a sharp edge and tore it apart.

I was so mad, everything around me was literally tinged with red. Hubby said “calm down -we’ll call UPS. see what they tell us” and I dropped it. I left it alone because I know if I even approached the subject before I was able to let it go completely, I would be a bumbling idiot.

The danger of that course of action, however, is that you forget. Well, thank you UPS for reminding me because yesterday, here comes an envelope from UPS charging me brokerage for the package. And here I go getting incensed again … because not only did UPS allow customs to destroy my property, but now they are charging me for it too.

Oooo… I was mad. Luckily, I had a number to call them. The delivery man came again another day; he asked me about my international package and I told him about the damage. So he quickly wrote down a number for me to call to claim damages. Which is the number I called with bill in hand.

Well, they were polite and commiserating – I’ll give them that. However, while the first woman told me she was going to make a note that the brokerage charges were pending the damage case, the second dude told me I would be required to pay them anyway.

BULLSHIT! I ain’t paying them jack shit until they either reimburse me for my damaged goods or tell me “You know what – let’s just call it even”. Fuck them. Rude.

Grrr… just makes me mad all over again. What bothers me most about this scenario is that had the Customs inspectors used their brain instead of their mile-long rule books, they would have realized that this book is unlikely to have anything hidden in the cover – book is years old, as can be seen by the writing in the book itself; but if that is not enough considering writing can be faked, the wear and tear alone is another clue. Don’t think that can be faked as easily. And if that is STILL not enough, the binding is intact – clearly hasn’t been tampered with.  On top of everything else, have none of them ever SEEN a leather-bound book? What the hell are you going to conceal in the cover of a leather-bound book? Furthermore, who would send an Italian leather bound book to Jamaica and then to the US along with other technical books in a box that is likely to contain contraband?

Nevermind all that speculation … just one answer will do “what the HELL could they be looking for?” is what I want to know.

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