My New Normal

So there's a thing called the expat cycle. Everyone labels it a little differently, but everyone agrees that the x-axis is time and the y-axis has some synonym of "euphoria" up at the top and a variation of "soul crushing despair" down at the bottom. You can probably guess where I'm at. The thing is, everyone always experiences at least one period of extreme euphoria followed immediately by extreme despair, and then after that their cycle mellows out. Kinda like the first couple times you get your period, it'll be really intense and then barely there and then really intense again, but eventually your body calms the hell down and you settle into what will be your normal. Enjoy that metaphor, boys. That one's for you.

Anyway, I thought that by moving back someplace I'd studied abroad, I'd skip the expat cycle all together. Because that's how that works, right?

Fuck.

If study abroad was one extreme high for me (and in the grand scheme of things, it was) and TEFL was a pretty intense low (what's this? You've just graduated and you're moving back to a new city where you've left a ton of baggage? Here, have 12 hour days of training!), I guess my expat period flow is beginning to normalize. Sunday I had a shitty day and I almost booked tickets to go home. Yesterday, I went to work grinning like an idiot because I was excited to see a student. It's a day by day thing, now, and the highs and lows are mostly not that extreme. It is, in a few words, normal life.

People keep asking me what that means, though. They'll say "Wow, you're so damn brave for just moving to a whole new country like that!" and I'll say, "Nah, it's pretty normal over here." Which for the most part is true. Czech people, for instance, also breathe air with their lungs, and often use that air to bitch about their government, the weather, and the day to day grievances of being human. There are two KFCs within a stone's throw of my apartment. I can get Starbucks on every block. It's normal.

But there are some things that have become normal for me that I logically know are pretty exclusive to this place. So I done made you a list of things that make up my new normal.

This is where I live:

That statue is a David Cerny piece, and while tourists are always taking photos of them, they are now just a thing. Here's the one in my building:

This one is on my way to work:

AND THESE CREEPY FUCKERS ARE EVERYWHERE, AND THIS IS THEM ON THEIR SPACESHIP:

These guys are visible everywhere, and no one is really bothered by them. I even have a soft spot for a couple of them. There's Pantless Hobo, who refuses to pull his pants up over the tops of his thighs, which is usually okay because he wears a shirt that is almost a dress... until its not. There's Elephant Elvis, who has a guitar and will play on trams and metros for money, usually bad Elvis covers interspersed with an elephant noise made by pursing his lips and giving himself an aneurysm.

The whole place is covered in street art, which is possibly my favorite part. It ranges from things like this little guy on the crosswalk...

...to this guy all over Zizkov...

...to Swoon pieces scattered all over the city (this is about a stone's throw from the Astronomical clock)...

...to painted streets...

...to Spiderman on the metronome...

...and finally to knitted fish on the riverside.

The pyrotechnics at soccer games are fan supplied.

No one shies from a good public phallic object.

And there are about a thousand tiny things I remember being strange but now just seem normal. Heating in old buildings is supplied by pipping hot water through old iron tubes, and when the water starts flowing in the morning, it gurgles like a water demon. I'm frequently woken up on the weekends by the same god damn band playing a melancholy, tubas-only rendition of "Sway." I go everywhere by tram and metro, the last time I was in a car was being picked up from the airport in July. Pickled cheese is a thing, beer before noon is normal, and I have the option (once I can afford it) to just pop on over the Berlin or Budapest or Vienna for a long weekend if I feel like it.

That's normal for me now, and I'm already looking forward to my next move. And then things like kimchee and kawaii will become normal, and I'll have to move someplace even weirder and weirder until I end up on the moon, or like, Lebanon.