I made it...

I made the decision to come home around noon on Monday. In the next 26 hours before my plane left at 2pm Tuesday, I was on a bus for 17 of those. The "free" hours were spent buying my ticket online, hiking in and out of my site, packing, waiting for buses, spending a day's wage for a sandwich, and trying to grab an hour of sleep here and there. Then I got on the plane and started the trip home, arriving in Chicago at midnight and luckily finding a ride from strangers to Madison, finally arriving at 3am.

It's now 8:30am, and I have to find some clothes and get organized before the visitation begins at 3pm. Of coarse, to add to the passing of my grandfather, the ensuing chaos, the culture shock, and my lack of sleep, my amoebas and/or giardia decided to act up again (I'm on medication for both) - the only reason I can't go back to sleep now. But the exhaustion is numbing the culture shock, and the fact that I'm incapable of making a decision gives me a certain go-with-the-flow ease. And the stomach parasites might make a decent excuse to have some alone time, albeit the time will be spent in the bathroom. I'm not sure if my time right now in the states feels like reality, but oddly the last 9 months in Panama seems like a dream. It must have happened though, because I keep addressing everyone in Spanish, I'm still itching my bug bites, my clothes smell like mold, and oh yeah, there are still the stomach parasites...