I have been home exactly fifty days today. And I can already say that I like living in other countries more than I like living in America. Which is weird because I have spent all of my life here. It has been hard I think to go back because it makes me feel like I just have to move on from that life and start a new one. It makes me feel like I am being forced to forget a year of my life. Which is hard because it has changed me it has shaped me and I would not be the same person if I didn't go. Going to college I kept telling myself that I don't need to tell people where I was for a year because I feel like I will be rubbing it into their faces or that no one will even care. I also feel different because I went on such a different path then all these other students here and no one really understands. And in many ways that has been true. Not many people care. And people do feel like they have to one up me and tell of all the countries that they have been to. And nobody really feels the same way I do. So I have been ashamed to tell people my story. But why? I want to be ordinary. I spent this year being so unordinary and foreign to a country and I think it shocked my senses. I even remember staying I am so excited to just be able to bend in when I go home. And that is horribly sad. Because that is not what I am meant to do and I should not hide who I am and what I have gone through because it is who I am. I want friends that accept me for me and not just half of me.
I think what is also hard is I can't carry over the culture I have learned. Yes in some aspects like internal things I have learned and skills I have learned but I am not able to talk Lao with people, I am not able to have Lao food. And it is killing me. I had searched for places in Denver, a restaurant, a church, anything that could connect me and found nothing. Then with high hopes I came to Chicago. Hoping to find a church, but I found none. I had found a Lao restaurant and was so excited so we went out to find and we were told it was no re owned by a Chinese family and now a Chinese restaurant.
It was heartbreaking. Even though I knew not to get my hopes up I did. This culture that has the most friendly the most accepting and loving people are so hard to find in this city! So I have been searching. I found a Lao Community Center that I will soon investigate.
But it's not just that, I am just saddened by the fact that Lao people are such a minority. Everywhere you look you can easily find a Vietnamese restaurant, a chinese restaurant and many other countries in South East Asia. But there are no Lao restaurants to be found. But more than that it is sad to me that yet again these people seem to be forgotten.
In an MCC debriefing session I remember someone saying the phases you go through coming home and how at first it is culture shock and then it is cultural disorientation. First coming there was definitely a culture shock. The food (cheese) was hard on my stomach, the stores are so big with so many things we don't need, the culture is so different, the people are so much louder and different. Everything was chaos those weeks. But now I can say I am at the stage of disorientation. Where I feel like I want to be set apart from these people and these customs and I would rather be in another country and I would rather have Lao food than any other food, and I crave to speak Lao more than speaking English. This disorientation is hard but it's worth it because I don't forget where I came from and where I have been but also the new person I am. If you know any Lao people in Chicago help me!
College is good but also hard because of the fast transition I had. I was home for a month and then left my parents again and now have to transition to a new home here. But I think I have done well. I have found good friends and started classes, joined gospel choir, signed up for east asia student association, joined discipleship, found my way around school and found a babysitting job and much more. So keep me in your prayers for this time of transitions and disorientation and college!