So, I’m home now. Alas, I finally got on my blog to update my journey since arrival home. So, let me bring you back up to speed.

Upon arrival in the states on the 18th, I was able to feel a contrast after making it through: passport checks, baggage returns, and customs at the end. All these were suprisingly fast in a post-9/11 USA. All, but one of our friends had problem with their luggage. It was remarkably good to see my parents, and I could tell they had missed me from more than a month away. It has been awhile since they’ve known me to be gone for these long periods since they’ve moved back at the end of my sophomore year. That night, I spent at my aunt and uncles. Unfortunately, while being so jet lagged, I collapsed on the prepared bed for me around 9 o’clock. That has to be the earliest I’ve gone to bed in half a decade.

I awoke to a very blackened sky outside, and a clock that showed 5:15 in gigantic, vibrant, crimson numbers. I spent time eating breakfast and researching information on the world and the EU with the Lisbon Treaty. After it was about 7:45, I decided a jog/run was in store. It felt amazing to be outside in the USA. The warm sun was shinning down on me, while I strided across the hilly land. As I saw many hispanics doing lawn care business, I was all too reminded how ethnically tied together we all are. No matter where we’ve all originated, it is everywhere. Ideas of ethnic and racial superiority have shattered their false chains, forever, in my mind. Being raised in a virtually, all-white town of Spencer, IA, these ideas coud somehow sink their subconscious ways into your life. However, looking around, I felt overcome by ideas of equality in each human. Genetically, we may have different dispositions, but we are equal in God’s eyes. Politically, religiously, culturally we have so much to learn from each other. If only we put down our cell phone, stopped our car, and maybe said “hello” or waved at each other.

As, a week has past since then, I find myself somehow slipping back into the “all too familiar” routine of who I was pre-Poland. It’s interesting how these old habbits can sink back into our lives. Poland gave me so much, I hate to see all this go to waste. In the mean time, I’ve helped my brother-in-law and sister move back here to Cedar Falls and volunteer fixing up a house for a person who has MS. It reminded me of a quote I have heard all too many times: “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”
-Edmund Burke

A voice, a vision, feels like it is gripping my life with something more powerful than words. A vision of repair, healing, hope that people globally need. So, I have been researching into options of what I want to do post-China. It looks like I’m considering options of learning Spanish in either Spain or Latin America. This would provide me with the chance to go into humantarian work or other NGO work that I feel the world and USA coud use. The goal to get a job doing this line of work through learning spanish, peace corps for 2 years, and then get a job (maybe with the Red Cross, I’m looking into right now, or something similar). It’s a long road, but a road which I feel will be worth the journey. I have to decide come Monday on what I want to do. Time is rapidly depleting and I need to accomplish much before I leave besides this.

As, I’ve played some Soccer with old college friends, watched Euro 2008, and helped volunteer for some work, I realize my life is leading elsewhere outside Cedar Falls. A long, a long way maybe away from here, but so much is out there to be experienced. It all calls my name somewhere away. I know many people who love and care for me don’t want to always hear these things, but it’s the truth. I’m 23, and it’s time for me to go out there and do these things I may never otherwise do.

Wish me luck my friends, it’s time to buckle down.

PS – Hope you enjoy the new China header that will be coming momentarily to now.