Easy and impossible

Some things are so much harder in foreign country.

Cookies.
Dating- which was nearly impossible before seems highly improbable and futile here. (Ironically that was half the motivation and the circumstances of my introduction to this place) and the key rests with me… it is just buried at the moment. Might be time to start looking for it again.

Phone calls
Utilities bills
Doctor visits
Border crossings
Politics
Schedules- if they exist they don’t operate with the same concept as they do where I am from.
Rules (everything from classroom rules to social morays
Fundraising- I don't even know where to begin
Organizing- arg
Communicating.
Crossing the street- I risked my life three times crossing one street on my way home from school on Friday.
Ordering food in China (easy to order- never sure what you would get)
Making friends- it happens for sure, and with the most unlikely of people, but ever so slowly
Being understood

Then some things are easier too:
Movies- so cheap it is immoral not to go at least once a week.
Taxis- they come to your door when you call – less than three minutes.
House-cleaning (so easy I don’t do it- someone else does)
Flirting (could be easier if I were any good at it and not so uptight.)
Living in a fancy house (granite counter tops, wireless internet, balcony, pool, security guards.
Getting drunk (honestly is too easy everywhere and I might have given it up recently)
Transportation- I can walk to school, taxi or bus any where in the city, and for $100 get anywhere in the country within 2 -3 hours or so.
A suntan is almost guaranteed- you have to take serious steps to avoid one
Frustrations OR laughter but you have to chose one…
While being understood is difficult, Speaking is very easy. It is a culture of talking.

So some of the most basic things make me feel like an infant, things that I can no longer do for myself, or do very well used to be my strength.
So, I am here, again, living in another country. USA. China. Colombia. And life again is impossibly easy and staggeringly hard simultaneously. Living abroad is an adventure. One which, I apparently enjoy and thrive on because I keep finding myself, honestly putting myself here. How long does it take living abroad to not feel this way, to feel more at home in a foreign place than in the land of ones birth? How long until the number of things that are easy far out number and out weigh the things that are easy?