.....now what?

I am not experiencing culture shock. It isn't hard to come back to the states, for me anyway, and start speaking English and using forks and washing machines and paying three dollars for a cup of coffee. I miss my families and friends from Senegal, but I'm not homesick. I'm not even too terribly jetlagged. In fact, it's been a very easy transition slipping back into life in the U.S. of A.

And that's what I can't handle.

It's not that I can't adjust back to "normal" life. It's that it's too easy. It's that I just spent four months of my life having what ended up being a Big African Experience, and when it was over I bought a latte and checked my email and signed up for classes for next semester. I planned a summer vacation. Watched a movie. I checked the mail and Heifer International had sent me an envelope with the big bold words across the front: "Could you live on less than $1 a day?"

I don't feel guilty, or priveleged, or depressed. Nor do I feel inspired. I know people who would study abroad, so something exciting and life-altering because they are having an identity crisis, and need to "find themselves". Those people could come back inspired, start charity programs, change their major, write a book. About how they found themselves, got a new set of priorities or values, learned to appreciate life.

I came back and for the last three days have been asking myself "now what?"

Not in an identity-crisis kind of way. I know what to do next. Always did. Sign up for classes, find a job, finish school, etc. Or, in the more immediate sense, take a shower, make lunch, do the dishes, etc. Or, in the broader sense, try and find work that makes me happy. (There's a man tuning the piano in the next room. It's distracting.) It's just very hard to come to terms with the fact that after the last four months, I go right back to life as usual. I feel like I shouldn't do that. But I should.

It's just going to take a while to get over this weirdness, is all. And if I've learned anything, it's patience.