Three week crisis

Sigbjørn is listening to Joni Mitchell and the melancholic tones of Both Sides Now are entering every room of the house. It's not the first time I've been out of the country for a long while, rather like the tenth, but amazingly enough one never fails to experience what the experts calls the three-week-crisis or the end of the honeymoon-period. As entering upon a new culture (or one you know well from before, i.e. after countless visits to Australia), you are met by new people and places, new cafés, restaurants, pubs, beaches and shops. All this is all new and fantastic for a certain amount of time and then it hits you: Ugh, Norway has nicer food, Norway has better transport system, in Norway you won't get mugged while going for a run, in Norway you can count on the police, in Norway there are no coachroaches and so on. And you end up thinking about all the jolly things about "home", while actually just trying to overcompensate for a slight tingle of homesickness.

When I worked for a high school exchange program sending students to the US, we were very clear on telling the children that not every singe moment during their next year would be all sweet and fantastic, and they assured us they were totally aware of this and would not react by crying down the phone to their mums, blocking their thoughts for their hostfamilies and eating nothing but cheesecake and chocolate. Yet, three weeks after departure we had the first dads on the phone, wanting to fly across the Atlantic to go and fetch Susie or Joe as the offsprings were terribly homesick and would have a disastrous year if they weren't flown back home at once. Luckily we managed to stop most of these parents, and Susie and Joe lived happily ever after.

Nevertheless, I've now spent three weeks in South Africa and can feel the twitching returning to my stomach, an urge to glorify the mothercountry and all things Norwegian, not to mention the lack of a certain better half. It has caused me to do irresponsible things like booking trips half across southern Africa, not to mention that I'm contemplating jumping off parts of Table Mountain (in a paraglider, but none the less).

As a remote comfort the only thing I can say is that the three-week-crisis can at the longest last for a week until I've reached the four week mark and will have a totally different perception of the abroad stay. But just in case of pro-longed depression, I've booked a wine tasting tour for Wednesday and I have every intention to swollow.