Second only to "what are you going to do now?", the question I seem be asked most often is "what is it like being back in America?" After being home for about a month, a satisfactory answer still eludes me. What's it like being back, after two-plus years overseas? That's a difficult question for me to tackle. It's even harder to compare my former life in Svishtov or Dupnitsa, to my current life in suburban LA. I've moved from a small remote community at the fringe of Europe, to one of the biggest metropolitan regions in the world. These communities could hardly be more different, and finding a balance to my daily life, bridging my old life and my new, is challenging.Maybe the hardest thing for me to adjust to is the scale of life in Southern California. Our closest grocery store is probably two kilometers away. I sat in my car for more than two hours last weekend to visit a friend who lives 30 or 40 km from me, which is of course still in LA county. Yet at other times, I've been driving at 80 miles per hour and still been passed by other cars on a 10 lane LA freeway. Our small suburban house seems huge, and the genuinely big houses make me gasp. It's an impressive feat, when you think about it, to design an entire urban region, home to 15 million people (or more) and completely eliminate the need to walk anywhere. Has there ever been a worse invention than the auto-dependent American suburb? And the prices seem sky-high, even though it's relatively cheap compared to Western Europe. There are still some nice places in Southern California (see picture of Laguna Beach above), yet I could never even dream of being able to afford to live there. These are the things that have not been easy to adjust to.
On the other side, one great part about returning to America is how genuinely nice and friendly everyone is. This is cliche, I know, but I never thought about it until I went to Bulgaria, where it's, um, not so common. People ask me how I'm doing, help me find what I need, wish me a good day, and genuinely mean it. And of course, the best part about being home is family and friends. This needs no explanation.
The strangest part of life right now is that I'm still in transition. I refuse to stay in Southern California, but I haven't yet decided where to go or what to do. It's like the readjustment hasn't even really begun, because I'm still moving. I can hardly start processing my Peace Corps experience, adjust to a new life in my suddenly-unfamiliar native land, because life for me is still temporary. There are a few places in America where you can replicate a European lifestyle - walkable cities, public transportation, liberal minded stylish people, minimal environmental impact. When I get there, then the readjustment process will begin in earnest. Until then, I'm going to hole up in the house and do Sudoku.
Plus, it's too damn sunny and hot in LA. It shouldn't be 20 C in mid-December.
