Back in the U.S.A.

By 1:00 A.M. last Friday, September 18, I was back in my own home here in the United States. Over the course of two weeks, I had peered over the edge of a volcano to watch the smoke rise; played at the beach, a lagoon, a lake, and a private resort pool; seen wild monkeys, pigeons, geckos, and other animals; and spent an hour asking questions of a former Nicaraguan Secretary of Defense. I have never done so many things in such a short period of time.

Returning to the States left me in "culture shock" for the first day or so. After passing through customs and immigration at the airport in Miami, I headed straight for a juicy slice of pizza coated in grease. I devoured it at record speed and shoved down a dessert, too. My stomach, disoriented from receiving something other than beans, rice, or chicken, immediately rebelled against me and began moaning and growling as if I'd swallowed a poison. I guess that, as much as I might have disliked eating healthy food every day, it was probably healthier than what I would have been eating back in the States.

I moved into my dorms at UC the afternoon following my return, so I've been too busy to mentally "digest" everything I learned on the trip. In just a few days, I've moved from living quietly with my small host family to meeting my much larger "family" at UC. I do know that, by the end of the 16 days of our trip, I had managed to settle in to Nicaraguan life; switching back to English as my primary language has felt a bit weird. (Luckily, my new roommate is fluent in Spanish. Late-night conversations en español with him are helping to keep me sane.) The dreary weather in Cincinnati has also been a shock: in Granada, rain never seemed to last more than a half hour. Here, it can rain all day long!

I'll be completing one final blog posting with a "photo essay" of the trip. My Internet jack at my dorm (Turner) is now finally working - I'd been relying on UC wireless for the first few days of my college experience - so I now have a fast enough connection to upload plenty of photos, something that was difficult to do from Nicaragua. Until then, my thanks to everyone who has read the blog entries and followed the progress of our trip.