Secret

For me, keeping a secret is exhausting. I love to talk things through, analyze, hear others' opinions, and share ideas. So keeping things in is difficult. Of course when it must be done, I do... but it's rather draining... especially when it is an exciting secret that I know will bring much joy to someone I love. Yet for months and months I've had to hold it in until it was for sure.

A huge part of my lack of blogging lately has been due to this Secret. The fear of letting it out before the right time was agonizing. I had to make sure not to give hints anywhere. Even though I was able to tell a few people, I was paranoid that it would get out, fly around, and get to the very person I was hiding it from.

This Secret is now finally ready to fly free... the time has come. It is right. And it was her Christmas gift.

Nagyi's. My grandma.

The Secret? I'm going to Hungary for the second half of my student teaching. Writing these words in such an affirmative way almost makes me want to go back, delete them, and delete this whole post... I've been hiding it for so long.

I started looking into this nearly a year ago. I was hoping to get an alternative placement for student teaching in Budapest, but there were many hoops to jump through.

This whole semester has been a long, drawn out, emotional up and down process that left me feeling very tossed about. I knew it was out of my hands, but that if the door opened I would definitely leap at the opportunity. The more I talked about Hungary, the more my heart grew in its desire to go there. And the more this desire grew, the more I felt like a misfit here... not because I'm so strange, or (not necessarily) because I'm unAmerican, but just because there's a whole different side of me that I'm not letting thrive.

I suppose such is the life of any Third Culture Kid (TCK)... anyone who grows up between two cultures where neither culture truly feels like "home." I don't expect Hungary to feel like home... especially since I'm only going for five weeks. But the fact that I have the opportunity to explore what life might be like there... and to stop repressing that side of me... I think it will be more than great. 

Even though I desperately wanted to tell Nagyi about every step of the process, I knew it would crush her if it didn't work out. So I kept it in, hiding it from her always, dodging the question when she began mournfully asking when she'll see me next.

I didn't find out until just a week or so before we left for Christmas break. By that point I had pretty much given up hope. I would pray feebly here and there... but most of my fervency was gone. I was worn out, settling in to the idea that I'll be here all year, and starting to list all the reasons why that will make me more content than leaving.

and then. WHAM.

An email from my adviser. An increased heart rate. A short gasp. Another read-through of the email. A squealed outburst. A shushing of my roommate (who happened to be asking me whether her outfit had too much blue in it). A shared excitement. A phone call home. A whirlwind morning.

My ticket is bought. My heart is excited... and I keep seeing my made-up faces of the 6th, 7th, and 9th graders I'll be teaching... so different from my original plans, but so much better, I think, than I could have ever thought.

This was Nagyi's Christmas present. Every Christmas we have what we call the "csúcs" gift (the highest of the high, the peak, the pinnacle, the max). It's the big one everyone's waiting for. Usually everyone has one. But since nobody knows what everyone got each other, nobody knows whose should go last. Luckily everyone who knew agreed with me that this truly was the highest of the high, the csúcs. 

For the past few years I have given Nagyi a scrapbook of the year... updating her on various events she was too far away to participate in. This year I didn't have time to make one, but I figured my gift would make up for it. I took an old scrapbook, made a new scrapbook page printing out my ticket itinerary. Then I attached it to some crafty teacher-ish scrapbook paper and stuck it a few pages in. When she opened it she of course thought she was getting the usual scrapbook and she was quite excited.  

When she got to the important page, she glanced at it, was confused, and flipped past it, announcing that she didn't understand, still cruising through the pictures in the scrapbook.  

We then had to tell her to go back... and to read what the page said very carefully...

Meanwhile, we waited for it to dawn on her. At first all she saw was "trip to Budapest" and thought I had printed out her tickets for her to go back home! I had to implore her to look at the dates and think about what they could mean. 

 

I finally had to tell her just enough, since I realized that this was so far outside of her expectations that she didn't even dare to think or hope that could be the case...

Through a few tears she explained her absolute shock ... but her joy... and as she continued to talk about the implications, her joy continued to spread to all of us.

What a beautiful Christmas!