Who says you can't go home?

I'm home for ten days, for my brother's university graduation. And it is AMAZING! How even to describe it? There wasn't the culture shock I was expecting. Some things have changed, but not enough to make me feel disoriented. Seattle seems even more beautiful than ever, a veritable paved paradise, liberally splashed with thick groves of evergreens. There are flowers blooming and robins nesting. It is so lovely! When I see the familiar curve of the Space Needle, or the emerald patches of growing things dotted throughout the city, it feels so natural, as though I never left. That's how I feel I can describe it. Not surreal, not even startling in contrast to life in Senegal. Because when I am here, my I am ONLY here. When in Seattle, eating the food I love and being with my friends and family in this comfortable environment, it is the only kind of life I can concretely imagine. All other ways and places of living are like a fantasy, only half-real. And the same goes for Senegal. When I'm there, pulling water at the well, eating millet from a communal bowl, speaking Wolof, THAT is the only kind of existence that I can viscerally imagine. Both times, in my head I know that this isn't so. When in Senegal I know that in the USA there are people commuting to work on smooth roads, buying $100 sundresses and eating burritos, but these are like imaginary things, too unfathomable to be true. Likewise, while here in Seattle, I know that not so very far away there are people bathing in murky well water, who are excited about finally having a latrine for their family, who are eating (really pretty unappetizing) rice with peanut sauce... but it seems so impossible that such things could be real, when my experience is so completely unlike it. So that's how it is. Like two different worlds sharing the same small Earth. But in any case, it is wonderful to be home.