Thursday, November 12, 2009

U.S.A

Oh hello, it’s me again.
While I do enjoy a good “blog alias,” for the time being I’ll reintroduce myself as the owner and author of this blog, Ms. Katelyn. For those of you who don’t know, I returned back to the U.S. about 2 ½ weeks ago, after a long stint abroad. I know I haven’t written in a while, but I’m thinking better late than never to get this going again.

For starters, here's a bit of what I wrote after one week back at home.
Enter week one. I suppose it’s about time I write, in part to answer the question suspending high above my head: “how does it feel to be back home?” To this, I would suggest that the question be restated in the negative. How doesn’t it feel to be back home might be easier to answer. It had been 10 months since I last stepped foot in the U.S. Ten months…which at times felt like an eternity. I wish I could compartmentalize my memories better and categorize the late Mae Sot evenings searching for Thai tea and trying to out-bike the monsoon- from the three rupee, packed-like-sardines-bus rides in Chennai. To my dismay (or fortune, I am not yet able to say), these past ten months suddenly feel as though they’ve been shrink-wrapped…dramatically reduced so as to fit inside the confines of home, here in New England.
It’s weird that after only a few days of being home, nearly a year’s worth of experiences feel so small. They are no longer part of the present. Like a laconic short story or a scrapbook, they can only be reenacted in my own head. Any common traveler will tell you the same thing…that there are numerous, invaluable and inexplicable things that occur out on the road which just can’t be put into words. Precious moments of time where you are afraid to blink because you might miss out on the essence of a new place. If only photos and words could express these moments in their finer details, in the very way my memory, albeit subjectively, strives to capture them.
Home signifies a comfort that I think I could search for the whole world over and never find anywhere else. Home to me is a million of the small, taken for granted pieces of assurance and familiarity that occur every minute and every second of the day. The seemingly irrelevant, otherwise unnoticed “small things” that anyone who has left home, and returned, is familiar with.
Have I learned a lot in this last year? Undoubtedly, my answer is yes. I’ve never been one to sit down and identify life lessons from an experience, though maybe I should try. Instead, I tend to look at the bigger picture. Did I meet amazing people, learn a new language, help out a good cause, fall in love, and come home alive? YES. For me personally, it’s been a journey well worth the ride.
I don’t have plans to go anywhere soon. For the time being, I am going to concentrate on finding a job, as well as re-discovering my inner American (I no longer have a twang in my slang).

Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

ah ... your words already resonate with my preemptive weariness of arrival in "The States". yikes.

cannot wait to see yo foine ass in NYC.

Smaps said...

oh meera, if there's anything you can handle with grace and ease... it's "acclimating!"

<3