Adjustment, change, acceptance, forgiveness, doubt, nerves, love, missing, regret, guilt, stability, thankfulness...These are just a few words that begin to describe the way i've been feeling the last week and a half since I've arrived back on American soil. Needless to say, it's been a transition and I'm sure it will continue to be.
My heart and my head just have not had time to line up. My heart, is most definitely still in Ethiopia. My head knows that right now being home is a good move. I need start my first grade position which I am so thankful and excited about, begin to save a bit of money, think about master programs, and get some experience in the classroom. I'm a smart girl, my head knows that it's right but this dang heart of mine. I'm just so sad. :(
I miss Ethiopia so much it's unbelievable. Almost daily, I'm brought to tears thinking about the people there and how I wish I could see them, even if just for the weekend. I am so blessed to have truly made a family in Ethiopia, but it breaks my heart that I chose to leave and was only able to give 10 months of my life there. So many people opened their homes and their hearts to me and I fell in love, and then had to walk right back out.
Everyday I find myself almost angry at people here. It might be my family members, best friends, or the strangers I encounter in passing. I find myself not caring to talk about the things I cared about before I left and constantly comparing my life here, to my life in Ethiopia. It just doesn't add up, it doesn't make sense. The indifference, the inequality. Where is God's justice? Where is God's love? Why can't we come together as a human race and make sure that ALL people have at least, food, water and shelter? I look around me at the excess, even in my own life, I truly don't understand it. I hear people complain about their fancy phones, their cars, computers... and all I can think about are the orphans in YenegeTesfa or the students in the public primary schools who have SO little.
I don't know. Maybe in time it will make more sense? I need my idealist humanitarian to come to an agreement with my realist side...the dissonance may take a bit of time to settle and for my heart and head to stop fighting. In the meantime, I get to be the teacher for a classroom of kiddos that are just starting to form their own thoughts and feelings about this world around them. My ability to shape those thoughts and feelings is pretty exciting and it' my goal they walk out of my classroom with knowledge about how big, but connected this world is.
In time, I know it will get better. The tears will stop flowing and my heart will stop missing Ethiopia as much as I do right now. I just have to remember, izosh...be strong, chin up ;) Good things are to come, and I have a classroom of 1st graders waiting for me come September.
<3
