A few thoughts on returning to America after serving in the Peace Corps..

My last months of Peace Corps passed by quickly, as I finished training other volunteers, their masons and health promoters on Ecological bathroom construction and behavioral change with USAID funding. I feel confident saying that masons have really loved having a construction manual to take home with them after training to refer to as they begin projects in their communities. After saying my goodbyes to Villa Clara, Los Miches (my two sites), friends and Peace Corps staff in the capital, and purchasing some more beautiful larimar, I arrived at the airport 2 hours late. I'd never missed a flight before, and I suppose it only meant that after 33 months of living in the Dominican Republic I was officially on "island time". It's definitely not the first thing that I wanted to have to spend money on in my state of unemployment. I guess thank you Peace Corps for the readjustment allowance, but you should have reminded me that I needed to show up to the airport on time! Kidding..sort of.


 I arrived in Chicago to be greeted by my roommate from college, Mel, who is a P.E. teacher and volleyball coach for the Chicago Public School district. I took a run along Michigan Avenue that next morning when I woke up, and things did not feel too much different. It felt like the Santo Domingo Malecon and looked a lot like it too. It was not until I entered Target and was dumbfounded by the card swiper thing at the cash register that I realized there was a thing or two I would need to brush up on besides my English. It had been awhile since I'd swiped one myself and was a little caught off guard. This is when Mel decided to nickname me FOB, "Fresh Off the Boat". That nickname would stick for the entire weekend. 


 Mel had to coach a game later that afternoon, so later that day we headed over to Kenwood High School to load the team onto a school bus and head to another high school. First day back in America and I get to ride a school bus through Chicago! I was absolutely thrilled. I felt like a little kid in a candy store. The boys on the bus are all chit chatting about their girlfriends and where they want to go to college and how they are going to pay for school. We arrive at the other school where our competitors greet us. I head into the bathroom, choose one of the eight bathroom stalls and then wash my hands with the warm water. I am probably thinking to myself, "Dios Santo, agua caliente, inodoros, yes I am at a school in America." I am not quite having a "reverse culture shock" moment yet. I walk out of the bathroom and am asked by a few boys from the opposing team, "HEY..is our school nicer than yours?? Is it bigger??" I look at them and do not really even know where to begin. So I don't. How can you begin to explain that they have eight stalls in their bathroom and somewhere to wash their hands after they use it when there are schools that do not have a bathroom, let alone an indoor bathroom with eight stalls? How would I even be in the place to decide whose school was bigger or better. They both had swimming pools for crying out loud! I responded "Oh, I am just a friend of the coach and I honestly really do not know whose school is bigger or better." 


 This is not the only situation that I have found myself in where I have no words to describe the different mentality that I have gained by living in a developing country for the last 2 1/2 years. It happens everyday. I have only had a few break downs since coming home and every day my normalcy is returning more. Things that made me sad the first week make me smile now because I do have a whole other world to compare ours to. Sometimes it all feels like it was a dream and I am saddened in a way that slowly America is growing on me, although I am happy to be home.