Time . . . to get back to writing

I have been home now for just over a year. That fact seems so strange to me. I have been home now for half of the time I was in Peace Corps and for twice as long as I traveled afterwards. It is funny sometimes how time can seem so different. How lengths of time are so different depending what you are doing. It is like how the last five minutes that you are waiting in class before a vacation starts can seem like they take years . . . and how hours doing something you love can seem to just fly by. The two years I was in PC and traveling are such BIG times. There were lifetimes worth of experiences squeezed into a little less than three years. Of course every moment wasn't exciting (January in Peshkopi seemed to TAKE FOREVER!). The year that I have been back in Denver does not seem to have taken very long and in many ways I am still adjusting to being home. I have maybe gotten over my NEED to tell everyone about PC, but I still bring up Albania and my time in PC often. I still refer to myself as having "recently returned" and I'm not sure when I will have to drop the "recently." A year ago, my parents picked me up from the airport and took me to a RPCV holiday party. A few weeks ago, I walked to that same holiday party. A lot has changed in my life in the past year, and when I walked into the party, some part of me still feels as though I just stepped off the plane from China.

You may have noticed that this is my first update in a long time. I have been keeping a journal in some form or another for most of my life and blogging seemed like a convenient way for my friends and family to keep track of me while I was gone, but I have pretty much stopped since I've been home. I have started to write in my journals again (something that I did only sporadically when I was gone), but I think that I have missed this outlet. There are some things that are private and belong only in the paper and pen version that sits on my bedside table and there are some things that I don't mind sharing with the world. I have never really known or cared if I had much of an audience (except my parents, hi Mom!) and I don't think that is much of a consideration for me right now. I think that I want to write for myself- to work out things that are going on and to update and remind myself. I doubt that I will come back to blogging as much as I was during my trip, but I think I will try to come back and update every once in a while . . . .

Readjustment

I've been home for a few months now. I have started to write about 5 different posts, but I keep getting stuck in the middle or distracted. I heard a lot from people (and remembered myself from my previous abroad experiences) that reintegration was harder than the original culture shock of leaving and entering a new country. Knowing that doesn't really prepare you for it though.

Coming home is hard. When you leave, you expect things to be hard- you are entering a new culture, you are going away from everything and everyone that you have ever known. But when you come home, it is not like that. You would think that it would be easier to come home. You know these people, you know these things, you have lived this life. But things at home are never quite what you expect them to be. By the time I went back to China (after seeing my parents in the Philippines) I was really homesick. A big part of me wanted to just go home with my parents When I was homesick, I had this particular idea of "home" that is obviously idealized and not totally correct. So when you come home, the first thing is that it is not exactly what you were missing for all those months. I was missing something, maybe the idea of "home," but real home is this crazy real place that is always changing and is not always how I remembered it when I was missing it.

Second, when I was gone, things changed. I am at that age when a lot of my friends are getting married and having babies. So all of a sudden, I come home and there are all these couples and babies and people with completely different lives from when I left. I went away and they kept on living. They kept on living without me and now they are used to living without me, so it is sometimes hard to come back into their lives. They have been used to not calling me and me not being around. I have been used to not seeing them and not being around.

Third, I have changed. I'm not used to the fast paced American life anymore and I'm not sure I want to get used to it again. Even though it was really hard for me to get used to, I did eventually learn how to slow down and enjoy life a bit more while I was traveling. I kind of grew to love snuggling up to my fire and my laptop and watching a movie and then going to bed at 9:00. I got used to getting a full 8 hours (or more) of sleep. I am not the same person that left three years ago (yes, I just past my three year anniversary of leaving for Albania, crazy!). I have literally been around the world. I want to talk about all the places I've been and people I've met and things I've done, but I also don't want to talk about it too much. I feel a bit like this guy. My life is now defined by the past three years and I don't want to be boring talking about it all the time, but it is a frame of reference that I now will experience things by. My life is now "Before Peace Corps" and "After Peace Corps" and I now have a lot of stories that start out with "when I was on the train in Russia . . . " or "compared to Albania . . . " I don't know if people really want to hear about it or not. I know that I have heard all of my parent's stories about a gazillion times- I love their stories (and I love them even more now that I have taken the trip) but I don't know if everyone loves them. It is sometimes hard to know when to talk about it and when to just be quiet.

All of this is not even to mention the general weirdness of America. The cereal isle in the grocery store. Driving on the highway. Having a regular job. Don't even get me started on Sam's Club . . . This is the stuff that I thought people were talking about when they said that coming home is harder. And maybe I'll never really get used to grocery stores again, but probably eventually it will feel normal again . . . someday . . .

End of summer

The dip. I was looking back and at about this time last year I had a similar dip feeling. Summer is really over and I can feel winter getting closer. I bought my wood last week- this time all at once so that I don't have to buy more in the middle of the winter. Today it is rainy and not quite cold, but you can tell that the colder weather is coming. A perfect day to snuggle into bed with a good book. I've been searching for the reason for my current dip- I'm not unhappy here by any means. Work things are generally good, I'm getting busy again with the start of school. We had a really successful summer camp at the beginning of Sept. and I had a really successful workshop with my staff about time management and strategic planning. I've started English lessons with a few people in my office. The radio station is very close to being registered and start looking for funding. We had more than 20 kids come to our last Outdoor Ambassadors meeting and are hoping to go camping next week. With one of the girls from my MUN team, I am starting a girls leadership club for the girls that live in the school dormitories. I'm busy. And yet I'm feeling melancholy and homesick. I understand it to be more of an abstract sort of melancholy, rather than missing anything specific. I think part of it is the fact that the end of my service now is closer than the beginning- sort of a theoretical reality that I will be going home sooner rather than later, so I feel homesick because I will be there sometime soon (and by soon I mean within the next year or so) but I'm not there now. Ok, I don't know if that really makes much sense, but anyway . . .

Home. . .

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have a place you put your shit, that idea of home is gone. It just sort of happens one day and you can never really get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. . ."
-Zach Braff, Garden State


I have been thinking a lot about the concept of "home" lately. At the beginning of staff training Ian had us do a writing exercise about home. It got me to thinking how much my own home doesn't feel like home. . .

I know that I am ready to leave home because when I do go away I don't miss it. I miss the stuff sometimes. . . a warm shower, a soft bed, clean clothes. I could say that I miss my parents but I would be lying, I think. I miss my sister and my nieces, but I miss them when I am home anyway. . .

During the closing circle of the program I said basically the following: I have had a really hard summer and a really crazy year. It's not just that this program feels like home to me (although that is true) it is about who I am when I am here. I am the best version of myself. Everyone in the circle makes me a better person and I hope that I helped make them better people too. I am myself only when I am at home. . .

I don't think that my parent's house will ever really feel like home to me again. This year has been hard because I feel so uncomfortable here. This isn't home. . . but I'm not sure if I know at all what home is anymore. I don't know what home looks like or smells like or tastes like. But it isn't this. This is not my home.