Yesterday I drove for the first time since leaving Italy. Yes, that’s right, I haven’t been behind the wheel in nearly SIX WEEKS and SSG OPSEC let me drive a TRUCK! It was a very odd experience, and I was met with all sorts of conflicting thoughts. Nearly the entire time I was driving, I was running a negative internal monologue about the presence of stoplights/absence of traffic circles/very low speed limits/very long roads/general “pedestrian unfriendliness” of this post and this city. I summed up all my thoughts with this one: “I am so tired of America! It’s not like Italy at all!”
And then I laughed at myself.
I was just like some of my friends back in Vicenza who said, “Oh, I hate Italy; it’s not America!” (I never understood this, quite frankly, because Italy is flippin’ AWESEOME!) Of course Italy isn’t America. Of course America isn’t Italy. We’ve all taken geography. It’s not the same. You’re in a different country!
So here I am, six weeks later, taking my own advice. What did I tell those ladies? Look where you are! You’re in ITALY! People save for their whole lives to come here for just three weeks...(ok, that’s probably not true for Clarksville, TN.) But where am I? In the land of opportunity, of Chick-Fil’A and Waffle House, where I can sell the crocheted blankets I make (take that, SOFA in Italy!). Where I can go to church and sing in the choir (or not), where I can go to a city an hour away and not have to have a translator or tour guide because of a language barrier. I can speak Southern with the best of y’all!
My goal, then, is to bloom where God and the Army have planted me. While there will still be things that drive me absolutely crazy about this country (would it kill you to put in some sidewalks?) I will look for things to enjoy instead of things to whine about. It’s much more fun that way, and it will make these next three years an adventure in a “foreign” country that will one day feel like home. Again.
America. It’s growing on me.
