Spectator Olympics (from a TV set!)

Now it's time for me to write an Olympics post from behind a TV set instead of from a nosebleed seat from some Olympic venue in London.  It's my penultimate night in Switzerland and we've been reported for a noise complaint.  This embodies my experience in Switzerland.  Controlled madness.  I can be excited for Puerto Rico's performance in the Olympic games but not enough to bother the neighbors (oh and by the way a lady next door kept me up half the night bawling at 2:30 am two nights ago, super weird).  What propelled this noise complaint? (Normally I would be shocked but when it comes to my voice and decibels of course I am not).  I just happened to be for the first time in many many months jumping up and down in front of my TV rooting for Puerto Rico's own Javier Culson in the 400m men's hurdle.  He was one of a handful of Puerto Rican athletes in the 2012 Olympics and happened to be a favorite in this event at the Olympics all along and came in 3rd for a Bronze medal.  I was disappointed because I really wanted him to win Gold but the rest of Puerto Rico seems very supportive so CHEERS TO ALL.  ORGULLA BORICUA!!!!  Look it up in Wikipedia behind "bacalaitos".  Back at home (or rather in the comfort of the President Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland), this has been the Olympics of supporting multiple teams and multiple countries for me.  I was of course born in PR but the last time I lived there was 2003/04.  My heart still aches for my little country.  I told my husband just today I've always been pro-statehood but there are two very clear points in time when I am not...come Miss Universe time and come Olympics time.  Call me ignorant and you call a whole nation ignorant.  Every Puerto Rican in the world feels like their chance at Miss Universe and their chance at the Olympics is their last great source of pride (with boxing titles being a close third).  At least it's my last great patriotic bastion.  I jokingly tell my husband Peru performed much, much worse these Olympics games (it's not untrue).  I not-jokingly tell my husband I've given up 8 Christmases in Puerto Rico to be with him and his family in Peru (as tears stream down my face every time I tell him (as well as every time I write this)).  Today I am Puerto Rican above all.  Wishing I had a Medalla in hand instead of a glass of Chablis (look it up on Wikipedia too, it's a freaking gold medal c'mon!!!!).  Wishing instead of being admonished for yelling at the TV (for all of one minute the event took!) to be among 4 million screaming compatriots who I'm sure did the same thing at the TV at the same time I was doing so.  Wishing I could call Puerto Rico home instead of saying "home is where your heart is".  (Where exactly is my heart right now?).  I cheered for the British in their home country, knowing how hard they had worked for these 2012 Games.  I cheered for Swiss Roger Federer in tennis, knowing a little bit about what it's like to be Swiss and a lot about what's it's like to be "past your peak" and still working hard at proving yourself.  I cheered for Puerto Rico of course, and then USA because my kids were born there, and then St. Kitts and Antigua because my father spent time there growing up, and then Spain of course because my son thinks he's Spanish thanks to Messi (who's Argentinian, BTW) and Fernando Alsonso.  And then Peru of course because my husband was born there...And then I wondered, in one year's time, where oh where will I think of as "home".  And even worse than that, where oh where will my kids think of as home? And then I start feeling guilty about all this going from place to place and what it does for the kids.  Isn't it time we settled down somewhere, isn't it time we gave them a "home"?  Is Peru that place they should call "home"?  I have long stopped thinking of "home" as just a specific place, but I do get sad about the fact that my kids think of Peru as home much more than they do of Puerto Rico because we have spent so much more time in Peru than we have in PR.  And now we are moving to Peru for at least the next two years which will pretty much seal the deal for them. They will consider themselves Peruvian and then secondly American, at best.  Where does that leave me? Where does that leave Puerto Rico which is so attached to who I am as a person?  Is home where my family is? What about my little "perla del caribe", precious paradise riddled with crime, drugs and poverty? What shall become of it? Of course it'll hardly miss me, I'm only one of many to have left its shores for a "better future".  But what about me without IT?  It's already been 8-9 years, what will a few more do?  My husband's Puerto Rican friend calls me one of the "island-loving hypocrites",  essentially he says I say I love it but it's not enough to stick with it through thick and thin.  Does that make me a bad person? Does that define who I am elsewhere in life? Do I just abandon things when they get difficult? Am I reading too much into this whole thing?  All this because Culson won a Bronze instead of Gold? You know what else is Gold? Medalla.  Look it up in Wikipedia.  And so I disrupt this horribly self-destructive train of thought....two years ago I had the same destructive train of thought about nannies...you know where that left me?  That's right, crying my eyes out about a nanny almost two years later...I'm so predictable...

My next post will be from Peru, hopefully sans tears and sans hurt Olympic patriotic pride.  Until then, I lovingly lick my all-mighty patriotic wounds with an uber-Olympic/Puerto Rican bling to go along with it (and some Chablis just for kicks...)