Anticipation and Anxiety

Coming back to the US has been a long over due necessity.  The last 6 months of my time in South Korea was increasingly stressful and homesickness was a daily feeling.  I longed to have a full conversation in English about events that my recipient also understood and had an interest in.  Luckily, the two gentlement I sat next to on the plane from Incheon to San Francisco were socialable and wanted to talk.  It was heaven.  The first gentlment, an American engineer who is based out of Seoul and was on one of his frequent visits home in Pennsylvania was interested in my teaching career around the world.  The other, a mature, Korean-American returning to his home in Texas from the New Year Holiday of which he spent with his family in Daegu, we discussed Korean history and politics.

Since being home, and staying in the heartland just outside of Kansas City with my childhood friend, the anxiety has disappeared and my days filled with catching up on who is doing what in small town Kansas.  It has also been filled with catching up on my Western food intake.  My best friend bakes cookies and homemade meals daily.  Last night, lasagna.  This past Sunday was a full Thanksgiving meal followed by pumpkin pie and tarimisu.

My mornings here are passed with saying good-bye to everyone as they leave for work or school and then I gaze out the back to the singing birds, the wind bending the pine trees and the long corn pasture that meets the horizon miles away.  I love this open country.  I feel free.  Here, there are no ultra skyscrapers halting my view of the endless, boundless landscape.  At night, there are a billion stars just like Sagan promised and a hand full of coyotes howling at them.  In the day, as I drive down the high way, the Dixie Chicks song, "Wide Open Spaces" fills my head and I think this is where I may return once I satisfy the Indiana Joanne inside.

I have a week left here in the States before heading off to what is probably going to be the most challenging adventure I will ever have.  This adventure will challenge every weakness and call upon every strength I have as my world view will be completely turned upside down.  For one year, I will know what it is to have sand in my hair and feel the glearing heat only upon my face.   And I will be surrounded constantly by boundaries and limitations.  And there won't be wine.