The Wall

A week ago Sunday, I felt unusually shy and quiet.

And it made me angry.

I had arrived at the end of week two overseas fairly unscathed … I hadn’t taken the wrong bus, hadn’t been mugged, hadn’t misplaced my passport. Check, check, and check.

But despite my happiness in a city as easy and safe and beautiful to navigate as Stockholm, I could sense frustration welling. Perhaps it was because I wanted nothing more than my life and responsibilities back home to disappear for six weeks, and that was not happening. Perhaps it was my fruitless search for dependable Internet to address those aspects of my life that were not disappearing (a.k.a. residency applications), including tracking down two Internet cafes in the city that were closed for business, misinterpreting the hours the student hospital computer lab was open and arriving after it had shut down for the evening, and getting locked (literally) in the stairwell for fifteen minutes banging on the door for someone to let me back in in search of (purportedly) better free wireless signal on the second floor of my dorm complex. Perhaps it was the fact that I do not speak Swedish beyond conversational basics, whereas I spoke Spanish and Portuguese when I lived in Spain and Brazil, respectively.

Or perhaps it was my continued knack of attracting interesting characters of the opposite sex … most recently in the form of a handicapped, Persian man (who was very sweet and for who I was happy to help) in the fruits and vegetables section of the local grocery store. I hoisted three boxes of pears so he could select what he wanted from the more un-bruised options in the fourth box of the stack. He asked me the usual questions in very broken English … what am I am doing here, how long am I here, do I like it here. Even though it would be best for my personal protection as a woman navigating the world alone to tell lies in these circumstances, I harbor very real Midwestern guilt about this and am relatively unable to do so. But when he made a rounded, sweeping motion over his belly and asked – “You have baby? You have boyfriend?” – I said, “Have a good night, sir. God natt,” and walked briskly away, ducking behind the display of tomatoes. I wasn’t quick enough, and soon he motored around in his cart to where I was saying very clearly in what English he could speak, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” Caught, I had no choice but to show him sixteen heads of lettuce. Each one that I proffered had a slightly brown edge on a portion of an outer leaf but otherwise was intact and the normal shade of green. He would wrinkle his nose and shake his head, wagging his finger vaguely in the direction of the lettuce he wanted me to choose next. Finally, I told him, “They’re all like this!” I bid him good night and strode away for a second time, hiding instead behind the cheese display two aisles over and jamming his phone number he had scribbled on a piece of paper into my pocket.

But whatever it was, the medical school life in Iowa, the absent Internet, lack of Swedish, or my uncanny abilities in the men department (apparently still channeling Godsocks --- Iowa Staters, this one’s for you!), I hit somewhat of a wall and took a walk around the neighborhood to clear my mind.

This place of frustration, about two weeks in, is familiar to me, having occurred twice before when I was living in Spain and Brazil. Rather than traveling through Stockholm, I’m trying to live and work in Stockholm, albeit on a very short-term basis. I attempt to solve simple problems --- where to buy cheap groceries, how to do my laundry, where to get my haircut --- in ways that normally work for me back home, in ways that do not and should not work in a new culture. I got caught up, true to my nature, in small details that, in good time, took care of themselves, ones that were not worthy of the stress I ascribed them.

And at two weeks, I remembered to count my blessings. I was learning immensely from my rotation; I was in love with the city of Stockholm; I was grateful for my new friends. Check, check, and check.

(And, in case you’re wondering, I never did call the man from the fruits and vegetables aisle back … !)