One Year Down...

So technically we have only been in Yekaterinburg for a little more than eleven months. The good news, however, is that you can leave post on the first day of the month you arrived, which means we can be out of here on August 1st, 2014. Not that I'm counting down or anything, mind you. I'm just saying.

So, how has this almost-one-year treated me? It's funny, I was reading back through old blog posts and I have to say, they were pretty darn peppy. Right now, John and I are kind of at our lowest point. You'd have thought that would have come during the winter, but I've talked to people and a lot of them say the one year mark (or right before it) can be the hardest. Now that we're finally on the downhill slide, I'm hoping it will be easier for all of us. On the other hand, there's that part of your brain that says, "Good lord, we're only halfway done!?!?"

Some of you may recall that culture shock chart I referred to a while back - or "cultural adaptation curve" as they call it. As I was going through some of my CLO materials, I came across an article on culture shock, which I hadn't glanced at in a while. John and I seem to be experiencing several of the classic symptoms: withdrawal, loneliness, irritability, hostility toward the host culture... It's not a great place to be in. And the thing is, all of this is supposed to end around six months (at least according to all those handy dandy charts). At this rate, we'll start to get comfortable just when it's time to leave.

I'm wondering if any of my other Foreign Service friends have experienced this mid-point slump, and if you have any ideas of what to do about it. I know we'll survive, but I'd like to do more than just hang on by our fingernails for the next twelve months, ya know? In the meantime, all we can do is take one day at a time, look forward to all the travel we have coming up, and try to take out all our hostility on something other than each other.