India: A Long Overdue Recap

 I haven't stretched these muscles in a long time. Two plus years, in fact.

I knew it had been a while since my last post, but didn't realize it'd been over two years since outlining our wonderfully terrible repatriation flight from India to the US in April 2020.

The past two years, for us and everyone else, has been jam-packed with Covid stories, workplace war stories, and head-shaking political moments. But we couldn't be happier while sitting in a Starbucks in Des Moines, killing time before meeting a good friend for a drink, after securing jobs stateside. Returning to the US cost an arm and a leg, and no doubt we're returning at a weird time, but it is well worth being close to friends/family....and a Target.

When we returned to the US in April 2020, we had no idea we'd be staying for nearly six months. With metal sheets being boarded onto the apartment doors of Covid-positive Indians, and our school remaining entirely virtually to start the 2020-21 academic year, we politely told our school to piss off and that we're staying in Iowa until we return to in-person learning. Fortunately, that happened sooner rather than later: we returned to India and our school in October.

And we returned at the right time: schools were returning to in-person (albeit hybrid) learning, you could go out to a bar/restaurant [before 10:00pm], and it looked like the pandemic we slowly transitioning to an endemic. Also, our holiday was upcoming, so we were able to scoot around domestically and finally explore India a bit more.

We took a glass half-full approach, but there was still a lot of uncertainty, so we wanted to hit India's big tourist attractions while we had the chance: the Taj Mahal, Rajasthan, etc. I was even more enthused when I realized we could skip Delhi and fly straight into Agra, skipping the smog and stench of New Delhi...how awful....

We loved the Taj Mahal, but hated Agra. The former was majestic, the latter was a dump. Thankfully, we were only slated to stay there for a day or two, so we explored some, got some good food, then boogied out of there.

Jaipur was much more amenable, as it is elevated and felt more like Bangalore than Agra. While we have had colleagues venture west of Jaipur into the desert, we were pretty content with exploring the city, purchasing goodies at the market, and enjoying rooftop bars overlooking Jaipur. 

With Omicron came the suspension of in-person school activities and the return to virtual learning. Any momentum built in Semester 1 was stopped in its tracks and we were left asking ourselves (again) if we should escape to the US or bunker down in India.

By this time, we had informed our school that we wouldn't be returning for the 2022-23 academic year. It took all of five minutes after the survey was released to reply 'thanks, but no thanks'. We could have said something less savory, but we are Midwesterners (or honorary Midwesterners) after all.

Though we had a couple nibbles internationally, our goal was to return to the US. We had started the green card process, Dita had finally secured her Iowa teaching license, and we were ready to settle in one location for a good while. However, the most stressful part of this process (and one that we had been mentally preparing for) was giving up your current job in November and not securing a job until April/May, due to the different hiring periods for international versus US public schools. And though this caused stress because of the uncertainty surrounding our flights, the thing that kept us sane was the hope to return to Indonesia in April before moving back to the US. 

Well, it took booking two separate tickets and arriving in Bali versus Jakarta (again, how awful...), but we were able to speak some bahasa Indonesia (or try and fail to, in my case), eat a lot of beef, and return to India with a ridiculous amount of sambal. Two incredibly slow months later, we returned to the US, while it was actively trying to return to the 1950's. 

Again, weird times, but we're happy to be among family and friends with no lockdowns looming. Though our American colleagues abroad looked at us in disbelief, we are looking forward to our new adventures in the US public system, especially since I will return to teaching full-time and coaching [appropriately skilled] footballers.

Oh, and we went to a Chicago Cubs game over the July 4th weekend. They played the Red Sox and, of course, they lost. I'm not bitter about it...