"Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig" -To Market, To Market

West Virginia

Upon my return to the USA, I realized a couple of things.  The strangers around me at the airports no longer meandered along to their gates or to stand in lines, but rushed to wait longer and cut in front of the crowd.  Everyone seemed to see other patrons as an obstacle, and I noticed fewer and fewer friendly interactions.  When people did interact with another person or via technology, they seemed disappointed, angry, or complacent much more often than they were content or cheerful.  There was also, once again, a distinct contrast between my and everyone else's height.  While it was familiar to see signs and hear conversations in English again, I missed the challenge of being immersed in a new language and culture. Plus, I had some difficulty not speaking to others in Spanish first, and little things, like where to put the toilet paper at the end of the routine caused moments of slight anxiety.  My first couple of Walmart runs were overstimulating and exhausting --there's just so much packaging and so many choices!  I was certainly ready to get back to nature after those trips --especially if I could go with the people that make coming back coming home.

Of course, there were some positive aspects of returning.  For one, I could trust that toilet stalls would also contain toilet paper.  Something else I noticed was that, while everyone seemed apathetic to their surroundings, some people would light up when I started a conversation with them.  On the same note, it was a breath of fresh air to see all of the different skin tones, hair shades, eye colors, body shapes and sizes.  I apprecited our mix --what makes us the full-bred American mutts of the world.  (Truly, I mean this endearingly.)  That level of diversity was lacking in the country I had just left, and certainly missed.  (Granted, the diversity of which I speak will not likely be localized in my photos or many places in West Virginia.)

 Since returning, I've found that, at times, it's incredibly difficult to understand what people want to know when they ask questions like, "So how was Bolivia?" "Did you like it?" and "Are you glad to be home?"  I can never quite gauge what the asker would really be interested in.  Does the inquirer want stories about the stubbornness of llamas? -retellings of climbing Huyana Potosi? -biking and then river-riding from La Paz to Rurrenabaque? -seeing Lake Titicaca and walking on the Isla del Sol? -teaching in a third-world country? being a minority and how I was treated as a result? -the socio-economic standing of the country in comparison to its history as well as the USA's standing?  -Evo Morales' reign during my time there? -the transition from living in small-town West Virginia to living in two-million inhabitants La Paz? -the peaks and pitfalls of public transportation? -something else?  The possibilities are endless!

Any answer that attempts to summarize that question is inadequate because Bolivia was everything at least one point in time throughout the year.  It was great and terrible, fantastic and challenging, exciting and terrifying, inspiring and depressing.  Being there taught me a lot, but there is never one way for me to answer how Bolivia "was" for me.  I loved it, but there were times that made it challenging at best.  Even so, while I'm glad to see my family, I am not glad for this to just be a great memory of when I went off and did something "before my life started".  This is part of my life, which started a decade or so ago.  I'm glad to be and visit home, and I love my family and want to be here with them, but I never longed to be home indefinitely.  For me, there's always something else to see, always another possibility to check into.

Pennsylvania

Bolivia had a lot of things, but it didn't have my family, friends, or local pepperoni rolls.  Thankfully, I got to refill those pockets within the first few days of being back.  I also missed the green of temperate forests, the rolling of older hills, and the songs sung by the wildlife perched in the trees and pooling in the rivers and lakes.  While I may very well go back to Bolivia someday, and certainly want to see other places around the world, for now, it's good to be home.  For this chapter, this is where I need to be.