…But I am afraid he was not thinking much of the job, but of what lay
beyond the blue distance, the quiet Western Land the Hill and his hobbit-hole
under it.
The quote above well describes my first two years in India. When
we arrived I was overflowing with excitement, but three months later reality had
set in with a vengeance. The honeymoon had officially ended. My road to
cross-cultural living in a foreign land was filled with just as many bumps and
potholes as when I started, but I now minded the jostling I received from them.
My difficulties included bouts of homesickness, missed
holidays with family, a craving for Dr. Pepper and an unrelenting desire for Chick-fil-A!
Through it all, however, I was determined to forge ahead, learn Hindi, and get
to know the culture and people of this land. Yet, at the end of my first year
as a resident of India, I began, like Bilbo, to think less about the job at
hand, and instead to think of what lay beyond the distance of oceans and
continents.
