This morning, my mom and I took a walk up to the local diner to get a big greasy American breakfast. As we stepped out of the house into the cool 60ºF weather, I took a look around. The sky was blue, the streets didn't smell like diesel, and there weren't any stray cats scampering across the sidewalk. In theory this would be a calming effect , but a vague sense of unease settled in. As we walked down the street lined with parked Saabs and Volvos, and said a cheery "good morning" to the new neighbors and their baby boy, I muttered out "welcome to the fucking Truman Show" (this was of course uttered out of earshot of the impressionable baby boy) under my breath.
Being back so far in the states (16 hours and counting) has been more interesting than I thought. Everything, from getting on the tram at JFK Airport, to seeing the multitude of blondes in Minneapolis, to adjusting back to speaking only English (I would like to apologize to the Sbarro employee at JFK Terminal 4 for ordering in French, and to the old asian lady named "Mickey" who took our tickets for not understanding "thank you" in Dirija) has been an adjustment.
Right now, sitting in my own room, drinking up the last bottle of Sidi Ali I have, pounding this out on my own laptop, I'm starting to grasp at how more filtered it can be here. Part of me misses the nitty-gritty, part of me doesn't. While it's nice to smell genuinely fresh air, have personal space, have domesticated cats around, and eat a big fat slab of ham, it feels somewhat surreal and even unearned. After dealing with an environment where people are so different, yet have the same goals in life, it's challenging to know that you can come back home to what you have.
One of the things that's made this part of the transition so much easier is the fact that, thanks to the wonders of the information superhighway, you can do pretty much everything except for be physically with somebody. I was lucky enough this morning to talk to somebody important to me online through MSN Messenger, and hopefully, once I get this DVD I got form Youssef working (if anybody from AIESEC Morocco is reading this - I've tried the DVD on 3 separate computers, none of them can access the data... do I need a program or something?), I can look at some of the pictures and videos taken in Morocco, and get some posted up on Flickr, inshallah.
