And me just a stranger, a long way from home...

I am not in Kansas anymore. Stepping off the plane, I winced, waiting for the cold that never hit. 5:45 a.m. was dark and breezy, and the first thing I noticed was...nothing. No cold, no hot. When the wind came I felt it, and with it smelt salt and brine, right off the ocean. There are eighteen of us now, staying at the hotel. Kaela, Tianna, Kelsey and I went for a walk around 9:30. I’ve never felt like such an intruder. “Minority” doesn’t even begin to cover it. I couldn’t stare at anyone, because it was their job to stare at me. There are brightly colored flowers and piles of cinderblocks. Painted iron gates, palm trees with coconuts growing by the streets, and children with tattered t-shirts and beat up buckets, and outstretched hands. A mule and cart wander by the car-wash where a man polishes a shiny silver sports car. The mule looks to be thinner than its own harness. Everyone is staring. My feet are dry and filthy, and my shoes will always be filled with sand. That’s okay. It’s warm- no, hot- and not likely to rain- at all. In an hour someone will come with a bus to take us to our first day of orientation. I figured out where the rooster is, that crows every ten minutes or so. My bathroom at the hotel has a shower and pink toilet paper and a wardrobe with two doors with one key each. Sound carries in this building, so well you can’t tell where the chattering voices and laughter are coming from. Which room, I mean- the voices are the other students in my program, undoubtedly- they’re the only ones I’ve heard yet speak above a mumble. I feel loud and white and very very young, in a place that is so beautiful and yet interesting in a way that makes me feel overpriveleged and pretentious just for finding it so picturesque. (I mean, the pictures in National Geographic are gorgeous, but who would really want to be a featured story?)I feel like I walked into National Geographic. I feel like I’m dreaming, like this can’t be real. I can’t remember yesterday, it seems so long ago, and yet I can’t imagine tomorrow because I have no idea what even an hour from now will be like. This is as close as I have come to being in the moment, but even the present moment is unreal.

I don’t have a watch. We’re not changing money until tomorrow, which is when I can buy a phone. I don’t know how I will wake up tomorrow, or at what time. We were given a packet of information with a schedule for orientation. I won’t write so much or so often, perhaps, when I have other things to do, but for now the focus is on staying relaxed yet awake. There are songbirds singing outside, and they sound perfectly normal. Busy highway sounds too, and my loud classmates (especially Kaela, whose voice I can always recognize, from my french class last semester) who wouldn’t be loud for the fact that the echoey hallways here blend so well with our sleep-deprived nervous excitement. There’s safety in numbers, and we’re all anxious to band together. I feel gaudy, and loud even when I don’t speak. I don’t know if it’s more rude to smile or look away. I don’t make eye contact, because I couldn’t read anyone’s expression here if I tried.

The hotel has WiFi. It’s shaky, but when it works it’s fast. To stay awake earlier, I tried going on facebook, to let people know I had landed and everything was okay. Angela, Maddy, and Mark all started talking to me. Chatting, I mean. I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to do. For some reason the scariest thing about this place was how easy it was to slip back into “home”. I’m in a different country, I shouldn’t be able to contact my friends so easily. Everything needs to change, right? In a place so different there’s no room for the familiar. Not today, anyway. So why am I writing on a blog.

I “should” go get to know my new friends and comerades. I “should” go downstairs and be cheerful and sociable. Or, I “should” put away the computer and read a book.

I “need” to lie down on my bed. I “need” to process my thoughts right now. I “need” to take things slowly, with regards to getting to know these people. I “need” to write out what’s going through my head, so that I can make some sense of it.

It isn’t the jetlag, it’s the culture shock. And I haven’t even gotten any “culture” yet. I’m excited, in a very tired way, and very very intimidated. We all are, but my way of showing it is to be shy, not loud. This place is beautiful, but to say so frames it- places me as the viewer. Puts up a third wall. There’s no way I could ever blend in here, but no way am I going to be an audience to my surroundings.

Of course, saying that, I already am. Which I am and am not okay with.