Our Endless Numbered Days

There are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days
- Iron and Wine


Getting ready to leave [a] home is a bizzare thing. Each time I am about to leave somewhere this bittersweet countdown starts. It´s full of excitement and sadness, satisfaction and confusion. It´s like waiting for Christmas but knowing that Christmas passes quickly and then you´re back to ordinary life but surrounded by wrapping paper.
 
But now (day 14 until I´m home, on the countdown) I simply feel as if I´m drifting. I´m not grasping for extra time with anyone (like Chile), nor am I anxiously packing and making lists of things I´ll do when I get home. (Mostly because those lists were made six months ago.) I´m just going along like I do every week. Grading tests, walking to class, walking home, as if telling myself to just forget the bomb that is about to drop on my idea of culture and family and life. I have no idea what kind of culture shock I´m in for. Granted, I´m not in the depths of Africa or on top of a mountain in Nepal, but I feel something boding, or if not boding, definitely lurking, waiting to take me by surprise.
 
But I come armed with a vuvuzuela.