Flattened American

by Christine Slomski (Gonzaga University)
FIRST OFF, I am discovering that by talking, I am so much more able to understand my own emotions and feelings as I feel my way through this test-drive of an experience in my life. Talking with Janine and how she feels she’s a culture within a culture in the United States, but that here she feels like “just an American”, I am able to clearly express how I have been feeling since arriving in Armagh: I feel flattened.

All of the parts that I thought made me up as a whole, all the parts that make me wonderful as Christine in the United States—well, all of that feels so insignificant now. I’m a foreigner here. To the onlookers I’m not Christine, I’m an American. I feel so flattened.