Montessori Summer 2012...Day 1

I am here, in the US, and it is full-on summer. I have forgotten how wretchedly hot it is here in the summertime. But it has been really fun to watch my Austrian colleague experience the US for the first time.

We made a long stop in Georgia on the way in and I had a chance to catch up with a friend from college that I had not seen in over 10 years. It is amazing how much changes and how much stays the same! We had a really nice (though short) visit. She drove us to this awesome dilapidated factory that has been repurposed as a goat farm/artist collective. Really cool.

Then on to Cleveland. I am staying in student housing....and it is everything you might expect from a state school tower housing. Small, hot, old and ugly. :/

Ah well, it is about the adventure, right?

We have managed to successfully navigate the Cleveland public transit system (actually not bad at all...better than the Italian!). I took Christina to Wal-Mart after we realized that the kitchen we were supposed to cook in had no dishes or pots or cutlery or anything other than a refrigerator, microwave and stove. I have to say, Wal-Mart is something I could happily live without forever. She was absolutely amazed to see that spectacle of American consumerism. Then we wandered around campus, stumbled upon a football practice and lingered while I explained everything I know about American football...lol

Now to the meat of my post. About how it is to be back. I have to say, I have been a little surprised this visit. I will illustrate with an example. In the hotel this morning I watched a young girl play a game with her mom (anyone know the "cold chills" ?) that I had played as a child. There was such a warm rush of memory and nostalgia for me, but almost as if it were for someone I once knew very closely, not so much for me as I am now.

It is so strange to be here, in this place where everything is so familiar, so easy to live in, because I know the culture on an intimate level...and yet I am no longer a part of it as I once was. It is not that I do not love being here, and I would be very sad to never come back to the states, but I have developed as a person so much now in Switzerland, that it is as if there is a part of me that is now also intimately linked to that place. I feel a little like a foreigner in my own culture, somewhat apart, somewhat changed. It is not a feeling that I regret in any way because I love the changes I have embraced in myself, but it is strange to feel these two feelings, of intimacy and separation.

I look forward to a summer of further discovery :)