It was a perfect trip in San Francisco where I got to see friends and old students, visit my old school, take a run in golden gate park, hit up a favorite happy hour bar, do brunch on the bay, swing through my favorite Sunday morning activity visiting the farmers market and just be in San Francisco. I had almost as fabulous a time in Chicago visiting Anna.
Now I'm back in Boston. I'm finally home after my 2 years in South East Asia. I arrived home to loads of flowers, many balloons, a large banner outside that said 'WELCOME HOME RACH' and a home cooked meal of my favorite foods. Why had I been worried I'd lose my superstar status of Thailand when I came back to America.
Today we had a large Homecoming party just for me! Lots of family and friends came by for the afternoon and we had the most amazing American appetizers, sandwiches, and salads. I'm aiming to gain at least 5 pounds on all this amazing American food and I think all the left-overs will get me to my goal.
Everyone was so fabulously inquisitive about Thailand and gave me ample opportunity to talk about all the cultural differences about life over there. Some people seemed genuinely impressed with what I did and how I navigated the culture. That's always a good feeling. We looked at lots of picture and I had to end a debate about whether a picture of me in a rice field was real or a backdrop (it was real). I spoke in Thai a little and got a few dropped jaws. But they really loved hearing about the tones of the language and my examples of words like 'khao' which has multiple meanings depending on the tone and vowel length (rice/food, mountain, news, white, knee...).
I loved it. The whole party was great. It was so nice to see everyone I haven't seen in so long and to feel all their love. It was just nice to be at a party and smooze and joke and laugh with everyone in the American way you do at parties.
I got asked a lot how it feels to be back. And I told everyone "They say the culture shock coming back to America is harder than adjusting to the foreign culture to begin with." But for me it hasn't been. Maybe because I was expecting it to be SO hard that I haven't had much trouble. Or maybe because everything is still so exciting and new I haven't hit the hard part yet. I mean I still thank god every time I get into a hot shower.
In fact the weirdest thing is that it's not really weird to be back. Things haven't changed much. Everything's where it was when I left and I know how to navigate this world. It's weird to have been gone for 2 years doing such different things and to see everything is the way it was here, not much has changed. Don't get me wrong I love it here, and it's still exciting and new in many ways. But also strangely the same.
The only complaint I have over the past week of being home is that occationally people ask me how my "trip" was. Of course I smile and tell them it was amazing, but inside a heartstring gives a little twinge because my time in Thailand wasn't a trip. It was life: working and playing and living every day like a Thai person. It was my life, not a little side step from the path of my life, but the route itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment