Banana Bread

Yesterday was the Prophet's birthday, so I decided to bake something as a gift for my neighbors.

As I poured the batter for a banana bread into a loaf pan, my thoughts ventured back to six years ago in Portugal. I had been baking my first ever attempt at a carrot cake, and put too much in the pan. As every overseas oven I've ever had takes twice as long to bake anything, I grew concerned when the bread had begun to rise higher than the pan after an hour, and was still not quite finished...

I slammed the oven button into the off position, grabbed my keys, and stomped off to the beach. I sat on a wall next to the beach--pouting too intensely to actually walk onto the sand and enjoy myself--and cried for a good thirty minutes.

It wasn't the failed carrot cake that upset me. It was that nothing seemed to be going right, and my stupid oven didn't work to boot on top of everything going wrong. That's what culture shock does to you--makes you cry over carrot cake.

I went home, turned the oven back on, chopped the inflated top off the cake, cooked it for another 30 minutes or so, and all was resolved.

Why did I think about my failed carrot cake of six years ago last night? Because if that banana bread didn't come out right, I probably would have responded in the same way last night. I like to look back at my two years in Portugal and think it was the perfect overseas cultural experience and nothing ever went wrong. That I never had much culture shock. And that now, with a masters degree in intercultural studies, I will certainly be even more above culture shock.

The only thing that is different now that I am more experienced and educated is that I can RECOGNIZE culture shock when it hits. I can't avoid it. I can't snap out of it. You'd think that I would at least know how to deal with it, but I'm not sure that I do. I just take life one day at a time...same as I did six years ago.

My banana bread took two hours to bake, but it came out fine. Happy Prophet's birthday!