Returned and Confused

Well, I made it back to Portland yesterday. The return flights were very long (8 hours from Nairobi to Amsterdam, 5 hours in Amsterdam, and then 10.5 from Amsterdam to Portland), but weren't too bad. Fortunately both planes had those seat-back entertainment systems so I watched like 7 movies yesterday.
The transition to being back has been odd to say the least. After the whirlwind of getting through customs, saying bye to Steve, and heading out to the car with Heather it hadn't entirely hit me that I was back. The culture shock began when we got out to the road. To see a big, wide, pothole-free road was really wierd. Plus there were traffic signals and signs, something that I hadn't seen in a while. The strangest moment was walking into Applebee's to grab some lunch (a salad and a much-missed Mountain Dew :). As I walked in the door I just said "holy crap!" (drawing a strange look from the host seating us). It was just super odd to be because this was the most white people I had seen in a month, there were no black people in the entire place. I have spent the last month being a part of a very small racial minority, so to be a part of the overwhelming racial majority was a very strange feeling. This is something that is going to take some getting used to again.
As I reflect on my journey, it was a pretty wild adventure. To make the friends that I got to make and to work with the manuscripts that I did, I feel very fortunate. I already miss the dear friends that I made in Nairobi and Addis Ababa and hope that I am able to return and see them sooner than later. If you want to know more about my travels, let me know and I will fill in the gaps that I missed in the blog. Thank you for taking this journey with me, I hope that you enjoyed reading about it. Until next time.
~Jeremy