"Home" Again

August 21st is this Saturday. The one year anniversary of the day I left to go on the wonderful, amazing, eye-opening, adventure of a lifetime. What will I do to celebrate it? Probably sit and look at all my pictures; the photo album Rotary gave me at my going away party, the hand made year book my classmates gave me on the last day of school, and all the pictures on my camera which document all the places I got to see during my year. I know it will be very sad. There will probably be tears.

It's been hard being back.

It no longer feels like home.

When I came back I didn't expect it to be so difficult to get back into the swing of things. I actually expected it to be much easier than when I arrived in Uhersky Brod, but it's been so much harder. Everything here is exactly the same as when I left... everything except for me. Which is exactly the opposite of how it felt when I arrived in Europe. It felt like everything was perfect and I was out of place, disrupting everyone's lives and sticking out like a sore thumb. At first my first host family, the Hornaks, didn't feel like family and I resisted ever saying that I was going home when I was returning from somewhere back to their house. Now I no longer refer to my house in Wisconsin as "home." It doesn't feel like my home anymore, it just feels like the home of my first host family again. Now Uhersky Brod feels like home and Wisconsin feels like being on exchange. I feel as though everyone is going about their lives with their routines as usual and I just can't find my place again, like I just don't fit in anymore and am out of place. Sometimes I want more than anything to just be the old me and to be able to just go about my life as I did before exchange, but usually I just want to go back home, to Uhersky Brod. I wish I could just "wake up" and be back in the Czech Republic, back with my Czech friends, back with the exchanger friends and my host families and my small town and foreign language. I knew that reverse culture shock would be hard, but I didn't expect it to be this hard. Certain aspects of America now revolt me, like how big the portions are at restaurants, and how fast food is everywhere, but I also appreciate some aspects of America more now, like our individualism and our national pride. I know that eventually I'll feel at home in Wisconsin once more, and that the reverse culture shock I'm experiencing will eventually pass, but for now I feel out of place and a bit lost. I know I'll one day find my place in the world, I know that no matter where I go I'll always be American, but I also know, deep in my heart, that a part of me will always be Czech.

Ahoj Česká Republika, já ti nikdy nebudu zapomenout.