a visit home and readjustment to real life

as most of you know, i visited nj a few weeks ago.  it was my first time home in 17 months.

before i left, i wasn't sure i was making the right decision to go.  of course i wanted to see everyone.  but i was feeling very content with life here.  things were going well.  i thought i would experience intense reverse culture shock.  and, i acknowledge, i don't generally deal well with change.  so the days preceding my flight back to jersey, i was thinking, "what am i doing?"

despite nearly a year and a half out of the country, i experienced relatively little culture shock.  i saw my first baseball field, drove on my first smooth roads, and saw my first billboards in 17 months.  these jarred me.  but mostly i was enamoured with america.  air conditioning, sleeping in my bed with the smell of summer and sound of the waterfall in the pond outside, washing my hands with hot water, taking a bath, driving, tv, diving under waves laughing till i swallowed too much sea water with people i miss, dunkin donuts french vanilla iced coffee light and sweet, playing with dogs without fear of catching mange or ringworm, delicious dinners and drinks with friends and family, new york city, hugging my grandparents, shopping, sensory overload in an italian food shop....it was all beyond wonderful.  before i left, a friend said going home is like waking up from a weird dream and this was completely true for me.  in so many ways i felt like i never left.  did i really live on a tiny island in the caribbean?  it was so familiar, so loved, so home.

but if that is home, what is dominica?  being back here feels foreign now, definitely not like home.  things annoy me, like waiting forever for the bus and the constant noise, the heat, the torrential rain making my tap water brown, the bugs, the absence of a family in family-centric culture.  yesterday i met a friend of a friend of a friend in the sea.  i told her that in dominica i found contentment for the first time.  this wasn't a lie.  but waiting to get back there, find that again, after the eurphoria of being home sucks.  we were floating in the warm sea, cool raindrops falling on the fronts of our bodies.