Sunday, September 2, 2012

Lo que estoy sintiendo ahora que he regresado a Carolina del Norte después de dos años en Japón


Oh, to be surrounded by these sweet sounds again and to understand all of it! The staccato twang of the desert north, the lilting cadenza of the south, the rushing river of fast-paced Cuba, the rolling music of Central American accents: being enveloped in Spanish again fills my heart with indescribable joy. And the people! The super-polite and super-romantic caballeros who open my car door for me, tell me I’m chula and that it’ll be a lucky man who wins my heart (afortunado el que te gana el corazón), the señoras who invite me for dinner with their family with a cry of hoy me caiste del cielo! (today you fell down from heaven), the crowd of quick dancing women at the Zumba class in the Mexican neighborhood on the east side of town, immediately letting me join without a thought that I’m not Latina myself. . . I feel wrapped up in a blanket of familiarity so happy I can physically feel it.

Strange that what I missed the most about North Carolina was its strong Latin American immigrant presence. I suppose since I’ve worked with Spanish-speaking families in some capacity for the past ten years, it’s normal that I miss the panaderías, the tienditas, all of the food that I can’t get enough of, and of course the areas of town filled with people I intimately know. But I didn’t know I was going to grin like an idiot every time I got a text in Spanish or listened to cumbia, like I can’t quit doing.     

It’s not that I’m not happy to see the other parts of America, the America of my childhood. I love the South. I love sitting down in a café and eating grits and a hoop cheese biscuit. I love the long, drawn-out drawl of the waitress asking me what she can fix me. I had momentarily forgotten how friendly most people are here, at least in the small towns where strangers strike up a conversation in the grocery line and men in pickup trucks lift their hands from the steering wheel to wave as you pass each other on some back country road.

In stores, everyone is so personable! There is no humble salesperson/Exalted Customer mentality in sight. Everyone small talks. Even when I called Geico to set up car insurance, the person on the other end of the line didn’t just go through his list of questions, he chatted with me as if we had known each other since high school. (Of course, that level of service can be annoying if taken too far, but I was happy for the conversation.)

There are other things about coming back to the U.S. that I’m still getting used to. It’s no joke that portion sizes are bigger. My “tall” (read, “short”) coffee at Starbucks is still 12 ounces (355 mL, for the rest of you). Dinner plates are so big they could be serving plates. And some restaurant cups hold half a liter, easily, I think.

I also keep switching on my windshield wipers when I want to use my turn signal (drive on the right, the right, the RIGHT!). And I keep apologizing. I want to say “sumimasen” about 40 times a day. Then there’s the ubiquitous bowing, the constant “itadakimasu” and “gochisousama deshita” at meals, the “daijoubu da yo”s that I throw around in casual conversation . . . but all that aside, I think I’m fitting comfortably back into American society as easily as slipping into a pair of old jeans.

I know this giddy feeling won’t last forever. One of these days I’m going to be sick of the gentle rolling hills that surround my new home in the country and wish I was in the middle of Takasaki. I’m going to learn to hate my 35-minute commute to work and mourn the good old days when I could ride my bicycle all over town. I’m going to receive terrible customer service one day and rant about how if I was in Japan this never would have happened. I’m going to get a terrible craving for Kazan Ramen and not know where to get it. But hush. These things haven’t happened yet. For now, I’m going to kick back and savor my $1.00 tacos de carne asada and my Negra Modelo, stare up at the blue autumn sky and slowly changing leaves, and let the sweet, sweet homecoming sensation surround me.