Should I be happy to be home?

So, being back on American soil is not what I expected it to be. My squad literally landed less than three hours ago, and Angela Aston and I are already in our hotel room near the airport. It was a crazy adventure getting back here, and yet so easy compared to all we have been through this year.

We left our hotel in Delhi at 7PM on the 30th. My teammate Krystle stayed in Delhi, because she has other plans. We flew out of Delhi at 2:25AM THIS MORNING according to the international date line in a giant Airbus. At 7:25AM Germany time, we arrived in Frankfurt. We were there until 10:25AM, and then we started the second leg of our trip home as a squad in a double decker jumbo Airbus. We left Julie in Germany, and while we were sad to see her go, it was a happy moment too. 

Around eight hours later, we arrived at JFK airport at 1:00PM. I expected it to be strange. I expected it to be clean. I expected it to be crowded. 

What I didn’t expect was the numbness. This feeling of…apathy. It was exciting to be able to understand every conversation around me, and to go into the Citizens Only line, or to be able to read every sign that I walked by…

It was the things I didn’t even think about that surprised me the most. For example, this apple that I found in Germany:

Around the world, they grow normal fruits, and eat them the way they grow. They don’t add chemicals, and they don’t spray them with parasites. So, coming from normal sized apples to the genetically altered gigantic apples of the Western world was a huge surprise. 

I was also very suprised at how rude people can be. I mean, in south-east Asia it was culturally acceptable to call people fat. They will tell you if you look like crap, or if you are wearing something ugly. 

However, the rudeness that I was so used to before I left is much more shocking now. For example, Angela and I left the airport and stood in line for 15 minutes to get a taxi. When we finally got one, he was very grumpy. He didn’t want to take us because our hotel is near the airport, and he was sick of staying around the airport. So, pretty much our first few minutes outside of the airport were sprinkled with the driver saying God and Jesus’ names in vain and cursing and yelling.

To be honest, it was a very harsh reality slap. We are not outside of the U.S. anymore. For the most part, people were very kind to us around the world. They understood that they were getting paid for a service, and they respected us for that. 

However, America is not like the rest of the world. This place is a bubble like no other. 

And no matter how hard it is to integrate back in, I know that I am happy to be in my homeland. 

This transition is crazy. I know that my emotions will be a little crazy for a while, but I am realizing that I will need to be careful not to judge the people around me. Before the Race, I would have been sarcastic and rude back to the taxi driver. Instead, 11 months later, I made small talk and prayed for him. By the end of the ride, I told him we were coming off the the missionary field and that we had been flying for around 18 hours. He gave me a 60 cent discount and wished us luck. 

That moment gave me hope. Yes, Americans are busy. Yes, many can be rude and selfish. But they all have hearts. And Jesus loves them all. They don’t understand slum children eating trash or women being used as sex slaves or babies dying of AIDS because their fathers were not faithful to their mothers. They have not experienced what I have experienced. So who am I to judge?

So, I think my motto for the next few months will be: