I miss home. There is really no good way to prepare for month 10 of a journey like this. I had no idea how I would feel after literally traveling around the globe and seeing 10 very different countries. They don’t tell you that homesickness may only get worse when you sign up for 11-months. Maybe it is sleeping on the ground, being surrounded by 50 people at all times or eating portions that barely fill my stomach but to put it simply, I miss home.
I miss being able to get in my car and go to the grocery store. Yes, the grocery store. I literally have dreams about going to the Festival Foods by my house and being able to pick out WHATEVER food I like. In my dream I run down the aisles in complete amazement by the choices that I have and pick out the most random items. Maybe some applesauce, vegetables that won’t give me worms, Crystal Light packets, CHEESE, Nestle chocolate chip cookie dough ooh the list could go on and on and it will only make me hungry.
I miss Minnesota in the summer. Long days on the lake, the Birchwood parade, waiting on the dock to be picked up in a sail boat, crewing for my dad, sitting with my mom, her windows open, the lake breeze keeping us cool. What a blessed life I have led and left behind.
I feel like I’ve been surrounded by poverty and brokenness for ten months now. Poverty has become my new normal. I don’t know what an American neighborhood looks like anymore. Homes with yards and fences and trees, it all seems like a dream. My normal is tall run-down, graffitied apartment buildings, shacks with tin roofs, homes built from garbage and abandoned warehouses, the homeless posted up outside. It is what the world experiences, it is their home.
I have been fortunate enough to be born into this quaint bubble of bliss in the Midwest. Dreaming about my lake home and being able to pick out what ever food I desire with only 45 days to go seems wrong when I know that for the majority there is no count down to bliss, it will forever be a dream.
I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met around the world that DREAM of simply visiting America; from China to Swaziland to Ukraine, people have looked at me with googlie eyes when I tell them I’m from the United States. I can see their faces now as they tell me, “I’ve always dreamed of visiting there, I just don’t think it will be possible.” They look at me with hope and see possibility in my eyes. I try to tell them it really isn’t the promise land they make it out to be, but at month 10, it currently feels like that to me. Swaziland may have been my promise land month five and now home is my promise land month 10.
