Old shoes, new country.

So it's been over a week. Way over a week. Almost two. And I still don't know what to say. I've been meaning to write, but I... haven't.

Readjustment has been weird. It's not as hard as I expected it to be, but then again, I was never really sure what to expect. Things have been more surprising than appalling. I expected disdain for American culture, a longing for Jordanian culture, trouble shifting lifestyles. All of that happened, to some extent or another, but thankfully not as radically as I had imagined.

My favorite reintegration anecdote is from my time in the London airport. After getting off the plane, getting new boarding passes because American Airlines didn't think the ones Royal Jordanian printed were good enough, getting through another layer of security and into a new part of the terminal, I stopped to go to the bathroom. In Jordan, the pipes are too small to handle toilet paper - so you don't flush it down, you throw it in a trash can next to the toilet. As I walked up to the bathroom, I got so excited about throwing the toilet paper in the toilet. For the first time in four months! When I was in the stall, I got excited about the fact that there were not one, but TWO rolls of toilet paper. It was wonderful.

Following that, I waited around for an hour in the airport, waited around on the plane for an hour because of mechanical problems, and set off for New York. According to the flight tracker, we were somewhere between Iceland and Greenland when I realized...

I threw the toilet paper in the trash can. Four months sure change a lot.

Money was one of the first weird things. I always keep a twenty hidden in my wallet, and for most of the semester, I kept an American dime in the coin pocket. About the bill: it's so LONG. And green. Boring. And thick-feeling. Weird all-around. And the coin? Oh my gosh. The Jordanian penny is bigger than an American quarter. American coins feel like tiddlywinks.

Clothing is another big one. Maybe this topic has been the strangest for me so far. It's a struggle to look at American summer clothing with a Jordanian mindset. Seriously, shorts? Ladies, I've seen plenty of bathing suits that cover more skin. And don't even get me started on tank tops. Tube tops? I shudder. Guys' clothing isn't so much a problem., and I'm thankful for that. I'm wearing skirts these days, because humidity is way too much to handle but I'm still anxious to ensure that my knees are covered. I feel okay about being stodgy with my sweaters - at least I'm comfortable.

Okay, so that humidity. Ohmygoodness it's wet here. I like it and I hate it. The rains are wonderful (it rained for the first two or three days that I was home; glorious), but the humidity in the non-raining times is oppressive. Extremely so. I walked outside last Sunday morning to get the paper before church, and I came back in sweating. At eight in the morning. I'm not even sure whether it was sweat; it may have just been water in the air that condensed on my skin. Gross. The torrential rain that came an hour later felt incredibly relieving after that sticky weight. Bleagh. I've made a short pro/con list of good and bad things about American weather.

Pros: My hair is pleasingly curly. I don't have to use lip balm. Or hand lotion, come to think of it. I get to watch (and feel and hear and smell) the rain. And the lightning and the thunder. Things are greeeeeeeen, everything green, trees everywhere, even my dying lawn looks green. Emerald City for sure.

Cons: I feel like I should shower twice a day just to get the stick off my skin. Being indoors feels preferable to outdoors, although I suppose that's kind of how it was in Jordan, too. Wet heat somehow just feels hotter than dry heat.

I guess it's easy to get used to life in America because... I'm used to it. This is normal for me. At the end of every semester, I drive down interstates 95 and 85 to get from Richmond to Raleigh. I go to church on Sunday and spend the whole morning giving and receiving warm welcome-homes. I show up at my favorite restaurants to eat my favorite foods and drive all around the streets I love. It's great. I've done it three other times. Granted, nearly a full day of air travel is a smidgen more than a two-and-a-half hour drive. But somehow it doesn't feel a whole lot different.

I wish I could give you something more complete. I seem to miss Jordan more every day. The signs here are only in English. There are few subtitles on television, but when I see them, they're all in - you guessed it - English. There are lots of commercials for car dealerships and Walmart, but no commercials for Sayidaty magazine and Dettol soap. I've found out that I stink at making Nescafe on my own. Apparently I need a maid to do it.

It feels like I was gone for a year, and it feels like I was gone for a second. On January 24th, the day that I left the US, I had a customary post-church Kick'n Chicken Wrap (aforementioned favorite food) from Buffalo's (aforementioned favorite restaurant) with Thomas. So where was I at noon on my first full day back in the US? You know where. Like I'd never even left. Sometimes things can seem so seamless. I'm blending in.

But I'm not. Those new shoes from the beginning of the semester? They're showing their age. Jordan has dust storms instead of rainstorms, so I don't have to worry about mud. Just the dust. Lots of dust. Some of it is pretty ancient dust - stuff that's been floating around places like Jerash, Umm Qais, and Amman's Roman Coliseum. There's also the sand, from Petra and Wadi Mujib but most importantly from Wadi Rum. Right after I got back from Wadi Rum, the soles of my shoes were stained a brilliant red from Wadi Rum's beautiful sand. They've since faded closer to brown, but I can see the remnants of Wadi Rum all the same.

The bottom trim is scruffed up, and some of the rubber is falling off. They laces look appropriately dirty. I've worn through the layer of white canvas at the inside of the heels and even worn through the rubber below that. My favorite is the blood stain on the right heel. It came from that wonderful, wonderful Wadi Feid experience. A battle scar, if you will. These shoes have been through a lot. I've been through a lot. And I'm still wearing these shoes here in the US. When I put them on, I see the colors - the black that used to be a lot blacker, the tannish rubber that used to be bright white - and I think of Jordan. I think of how far I came in four months.

It's been a wonderful ride. Thanks for reading.

With love from the USA,

Sarah