Let's file this under #immigrationdiary or something, I dunno. For the uninitiated (or, I suppose, you weirdos who just love being overly-initiated), my wife and I are moving to Europe. Specifically, Poland. More specifically, Warsaw, Poland. And while I am still considering how to write about how this massive life change came about more broadly, I've decided to occasionally toss little posts out into the ether to help document some of the, uh, more unexpected feelies that arise during this process. Because though The Move has been in the works for some time, and I've been basically operating with a baseline level of optimism, I do find myself more frequently oscillating between excitement and terror. Like, I wouldn't say I'm in a state of perpetual freakout, but the closer we get—the realer everything becomes—the more my optimism has to fight something scarier. The unknown. I don't know what I don't know, and I want to know, but don't know how to know it. And so I go searching for assurances without even really understanding what I'm looking for. I just want answers to a question that remains elusive.

Like you know how sometimes you wake up at 6am this morning and can't fall back asleep, so you go out to the couch and curl up under the weighted blanket and soothe your racing mind by eagerly tapping around the street view of your short-term apartment to get a lay of the land? You know, preemptively build some familiarity with your soon-to-be surroundings. To settle those gnawing feelings of I wonder what it's going to be like to live here. Where are the parks? Where will my dog poop? What will I eat? Oh fuck! Food! Where will I buy groceries?? And then you realize in the bottom floor of your apartment building, there's a store called Żabka and you're like, Thank god! I know where I'll buy my groceries. And out of, like, I guess, morbid curiosity, you tap into their website and it's just... Polish. Everywhere. So many consonants. No language toggle tucked away in a dropdown menu. Not even an English-UK option. My kingdom for a "colour"! You think. Hell, I'll take an "aluminium". Or a "petrol". Or a "biscuit". But no, only "Oferta". I don't know what that is. And "Oferta 18+". Turns out, not porn. Only piwa. And you're just frantically tapping between all of these menus and trying to figure out what the Polish word for "lemon"^[1] is but you can't even find a fucking photo of a lemon on the website, so you don't even know if you'll be able to buy lemons to recreate the dish you made last night. And it all suddenly becomes so... very... overwhelming. And you find yourself fighting back that feeling in your throat, where it constricts and you try to swallow through it, but you can't—not really—and that feeling works its way up to your tear ducts and starts squeezing little beads of fire into your eyes that just pool on your lower lids, threatening to carve salty crevices into your cheeks if you dare to blink. But you don't blink, because now you're staring at a coupon for Coke, trying to comprehend what the deal is. 7,50 złoty for 2 1,5 liters? Is that... good?

Am I going to be able to figure this out?

I can't even navigate a fucking website. How am I going to do reality?

Why can I buy Resident Evil 9 from Żabka, but not lemons.

And so you look into this whole Żabka situation a bit further and quickly realize that Żabka is a convenience store chain. You buy your conveniences here. Your hot dogs. Your snacks. Your piwa. Your, lol, Resident Evil 9, I guess. Okay. Cool. You're lying on your couch at 6am on the verge of tears about the Polish equivalent of 7-Eleven.

It's gonna be a long three months.

You haven't even listed the house yet.

There's no harm in building some familiarity, but embrace the uncertainty. No amount of tapping around on street view is going to prepare you for the real thing. Though you do realize that there is an Aldi a couple blocks away. You recognize that name. That's a grocery store. You tap into the website. Polish everywhere. Not even an English-UK toggle. But the carousel at the top of the screen quickly flips to the next image. A bunch of lemons. You'll be able to make that dish you made last night. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.

It's going to be okay.