Like Water for Chocolate, Like Exactly.

Mural on the exterior of a Zapatista school.

How do I sum up a 4 month trip to Latin America and what it's like to be back? Maybe it's like Water for Chocolate, Like Exactly.

 I had some of the best chocolate while traveling in Mexico but I will take Chicago tap water any day over all the chocolate in the world. "What's it like to be back?", I'm asked. I just stammer: "Water, I like water. I drink water here, lots of water...man, it's all about water...the American bathroom experience is an incredible privilege. Water, water everywhere."
I felt the polar extremes of traveling (and incidentally, life) in these past few months. When you're traveling:

-You're either on top of the world (or a mountain) or you want to hide under a bed as far away from the world as possible.
-You either want to use all your new vocabulary words or don't want to say a word.
-You want to know everything about the people around you or want to run away...or at least blend into the crowd and disappear. 
-You can feel terribly lonely or you can desperately crave time to yourself again or both at the same time.
-You can have the best meal of all time and the worst meal of all time.
-You can not think of home for days, swallowed up by another world, or wish you were around anything familiar. Anything...like peanut butter...like that one sweater you didn't pack, or that one friend you couldn't fit in your bag either...or someone who really understands your jokes.
-You can see it all or see absolutely nothing in a damp noisy hostel, sick with Montezuma.
-You can see the kindest most generous side of people or the sickest and coldest side of humanity.
-You can have the best night's sleep looking out at stars in the jungle or you could sleep in an upright bus seat for 18 hours fearing to open your eyes because the Argentinian orthodontist sitting next to you will take it as permission to start talking to you again.
-You could wake up in Guatemala with half your face swollen or...you could not.
-You can feel like an old lady wishing the 20 year old Australians would take the party elsewhere or you could feel 3 years old and not know how to ask for toilet paper.
-You can attend a Mexican wedding on the beach one week, be in a Zapatista community in the mountains of Chiapas the next, and days later be in the Cancun airport tipping with American dollars for a Caesar salad.
 - You can feel completely independent and liberated or you can feel tied down and dependent on strangers and guide books.
Here is some excerpts of writing from my last days in Mexico:
"..After 15+ hours in the autobus from San Cristobal to Chetumal, I finally made it to the town, near the Belize border at 2am.  During the bus ride, I took lifesaving Dramamine for motion sickness and contemplated the stars and palm trees lit by the moon out the window. In my Dramamine-induced state, I tried etching into my mind the grand thoughts and poetic moments that can only happen on a bus in the middle of Mexico doped up on Dramamine. But like my eyeglasses and my sun hat, the transcendent thoughts disappeared into the abyss. I would have gotten too sick trying to write it down on those roads..."

Bus survival pose with mustard yellow hoodie.

"I ate practically nothing except leftover lime-flavored peanuts, corn nuts, and Mexican cookies the whole ride...mostly because of the lack of meat-less options at the bus stops. A few hours in, the bus got some sort of rock or debris stuck in the back wheel. We didn't move for hours while it was repaired, since we were hours from any other bus to pick us up. I didn't bother to look at the time. I just stared at the moon or closed my eyes. At some points, military officials shined flashlights in our eyes while marching down the bus aisle with guns strapped to their chests. I think this happened a couple times at various checkpoints. Things blur..."
"...I got to Chetumal so late, I assumed I would not see my friend I was planning to meet. As I usually do when I get to a foreign town without a plan, I ran into some Dutch travellers. I shared a cab with the family going to a nice hotel. By nice, I mean the bed had bed sheets! The hotel where my friend was staying the next night was either not accepting guests at that hour or did not have any vacancies. I just understood “no, you can’t now” in the receptionist’s Spanish. My blasted Spanish. I’m not sure I’d do better in English at that hour though. I went to the other hotel with the Dutch family and I paid for a rather expensive room. It was easy to rationalize the expense considering that in the week before I had been living for nothing while sleeping in a cinema...I crashed immediately in my new fancy room with a mini fridge and hair dryer and television I would never use. I had not had anything to eat. Sometimes sleeping is easier than finding food..." 
"...the next morning I got a hold of my friend using the correct string of mysterious numbers to make a Skype connection to a Mexican cell phone. I walked around the block to her hotel room. Exhausted but happy to see a familiar face, we walked towards the water, to see the Atlantic side of things, later the duty free zone at the Belizan border, and then I was off to an overnight bus again to catch a morning flight out of Cancun..."
My last exhausting days of the trip made my arrival in Chicago that much sweeter.
The first person I talked to in the United States was, of course, a customs agent. Our conversation went something like this:

Customs Agent: [Looking incredulously at my list of countries I've visited] What were you doing in Guatemala?
Me: [Envisioning insects biting my face] Umm, beh, uhhh, well, traveling?
-Customs: [Furling his brow] So how long were you in Mexico?
-Me: Since September.
-Customs: [Furling brow more dramatically] What were you doing?
Me: [Private panic about what I've been doing with my life.] Well, just, uh, studying Spanish.
Customs: [Eyebrows relax] Oh, you're a student. So what brings you here today?
Me: Well, I have a connecting flight to Chicago. I'm going home.
Customs: Yeah, but why today?
Me: [Existential crisis...yes, why am I back today? Why not next week or tomorrow?] Well, umm, I have to work now.
Customs: [Eyebrows start furling again] but you said you were a student.
Me: Well, I was but now I have to work. I'm finished being a student. And it's time to work.

This is a google image for "furled brow" but also resembles the customs agent.

Customs: [Stares incredulously again for a long moment with my passport and looks tired] Welcome home.

So here I am at home. My Chicago accent is back in full force and people laugh at my jokes again. And yes, it's definitely time to work...and visit friends...and absentmindedly eavesdrop on Spanish conversations in the grocery store...and eat peanut butter...and take hot showers...and listen to Pandora...and drink large glasses of sweet, delicious Chicago tap water.