I am sitting on the bed in room 208 at AIM’s US Headquarters in Pearl River, NY. Yep, I’m back in the good ‘ole USA. I will spend just tonight here and then continue with the final leg of my journey to Charlotte tomorrow afternoon. It’s kind of surreal. I feel like it all happened so fast. I mean, it feels like just yesterday I was in this very place for orientation preparing to go out into the field and now…now it’s all over. I don’t really know how I feel about it all just yet. Yes, its nice to have hot shower, familiar food and a really comfortable bed, but…it’s not Africa. I just know I have lot of adjustments to make now that I’m back just as I had a lot to make when I get to Kenya. It will take time-the whole readjustment process. They warned me about the reverse culture shock and told me how to deal with it. Nothing is going to help me when I’m missing the children though, that is for sure. That will be hard. It is hard. No one can just tell me how to deal with those feelings. No one will understand completely. But God knows. Every feeling I experience He has experienced and so I will continue to turn to Him for comfort and peace still as I return home and reenter this world and this life I left behind for just a short period of time.
I had to stop by here to have my debrief with Rae, the short-term coordinator, which we will do over breakfast tomorrow morning. Tonight was the annual Christmas party so I was lucky to be here for that. It was like Thanksgiving all over again! It was a lot of fun too. They played Family Fued with the employees in offices on the “upper/main level” vs. the “lower level” employees. It was really hilarious! It is 11 pm right now, but really, since my biological clock is still on Kenyan time, my body feels like it is 7 am so I am going to sleep. I will blog at a later time to catch up on this past week.
