Waking up at incoherently at 4am to blearily look around the room, I wonder, “Where the hell am I?”
Wait, this is familiar, it’s coming back to me now… I’m home. Ahhhhh…
It’s nice to be back. San Diego’s not too bad a place. I can drink the water (not that I wasn’t drinking it in Buenos Aires… and I am still alive) I have a kitchen to use… and its stocked with usable pots and pans, complete with un flaking Teflon and with out the mystery black crust burnt to the bottom. There’s a refrigerator lacking miscellaneous rotting foodstuffs, my family is here, and home just wouldn’t be home without Buddy the bipolar dog.
It is going to take a while to readjust to “the real world.” Not that I’ve ever really lived there. I keep saying “gracias” to all the waiters. I know the customs guy yesterday really appreciated my “Hola.” Converting all the prices from “pesos” to dollars is not going to help me financially. I need to remember that a $15 meal here is actually $15 not $5. And the fussy South American plumbing has me well trained… I hesitate to throw the toilet paper in the toilet, only breaking down when I realize there is no trash can. (South American plumbing is sensitive… toilet paper is just too much, so it goes in the waste basket next to the toilet. This may not seem sanitary but I’m going to have to guess an overflowing toilet is worse.)
My favorite part of the return to the “real world,” is that it's time to think about making money again… well, I’ll put that thought off till after Hawaii in December, and I do have that day of work in Florida with the museum, but something tells me that’s not going to be quite enough to support myself for the coming year.
So, that ever fun thought…what odd job to do now? Somehow I need to figure out how to support my new travel habit… where next? India? Laos? Patagonia? I hear Thailand is nice. So many choices, so many great places, and I’ve got my rabies shots… Time to start planning…
