Home

Wifi problems again...there have been so many times recently that I've wanted to blog but it's impossible without wifi.  But it's back (at least for now)!

I have 18 days left here and my heart is breaking.  I never realized just how hard the end of this experience would be.  Coming here, getting robbed, getting my visa screwed up, getting lost numerous times...all of that pain and anxiety and fear were nothing in comparison to the realization of having to leave.  Absolutely nothing.

I think about hugging my friends and mi mama and mi abuela, not knowing when, if ever I will see them again, and I just can't handle it.  It's like my heart can't take it.  This house has become a home, these strangers have become family, this crazy city is now oddly comforting, and this language that used to be so foreign now comes easier than English at times.

I think of how much I've changed and grown, and then I realize why leaving is so scary.  It's so scary because my home will never be the same again after having had this experience.  My perspective has changed, by world-view has expanded, and nothing will ever look or feel the same anymore. Maybe that's one of the best (but definitely most scary and uncomfortable) outcomes of this experience.  It is life-changing.  It makes you look at the world from numerous points of view and more than anything, makes you able to call more than one place, home.

I that is my biggest struggle.  What is home to me now?  Sitting with my family at my house in York, PA opening presents together at Christmastime is home.  Sitting here in this house with mi abuela drinking mate is also home.  Speaking in English is home.  Speaking in Spanish is home.  Pennsylvania is home.  York is home.   Cordoba is home.  Argentina is home.

Maybe home is just an accumulation of all the places, people, and houses that make you, you.  Maybe home from now on will be carried more in my heart than find its value in my physical location.  Maybe home, for me has changed, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.