The Last 24 Hours

Leaving Costa Rica and arriving in the US has been a roller coaster of emotions. The last 24 hours before leaving Costa Rica involved:

-eating avocado at all three meals
-visiting and lots of good-byes
-going to Frailes for the last time
-waiting in line a the bank with 30 people watching Animal Planet on mute
-delivering "thank you" cookies
-packing
-being serenaded
-hugs, tears, laughter and very little sleep

That's right I was serenaded. I was finally eating dinner around 7:00 when one of my students and her mom showed up to say good-bye one last time. Just as I was finishing my dinner we hear singing that sounded like it was coming from the front door. "Who's birthday is it?" someone asked. No one answered. "Is anyone going to answer that?" I asked. No reply. "So I guess I have to go." When I opened the door nearly the entire youth group was standing there, guitar and tambourine and all, singing me a sweet Spanish love song. It was amazing to feel recognized and loved like that. I wondered if my friends and family might spring something on me but I'd given up hope at that point and had reconciled that I didn't need a party to prove that I was loved and appreciated. And then I was serenaded and celebrated and hugged! I couldn't stop shaking with emotion. And I realized that while it was hard for me to leave home, to leave behind all the things that are "normal" and "comfortable" and "safe" about my life, to leave behind the people I love, I somehow was finding myself again at this same point. That I was safe and happy and comfortable and it was time to leave behind the people I loved and who loved me. How did that happen?

Traveling was exhausting but everything went smoothly. I even arrived a bit early. I had time to do some yoga in Miami and made friends with some kids from Jamaica in the process. And (possibly because I wasn't crying so much on the second flight) I made some friends with a sweet couple from Ecuador visiting their daughter in Boston. Then of course I got to see my mother for the first time in six months. Feel so blessed to have found myself supported along the way while traveling. And despite the upheaval, the heartache and the difficulty of this experience I'm grateful to be learning what's truly important to me, what matters more than any "thing" on Earth: family, in all it's forms and it's ever-expanding greatness. Thank you for family, new and old.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

Funny how much "coming home" feels like traveling.

*coming soon: The First 24 Hours after arriving in the US