I returned home, selfishly craving the luxuries of my bed, my moms cooking and the company of my family during the holidays. During the final days in Dulac all I wanted was to go home because I felt so useless and alone sometimes and now that I am home I wish I could be more proactive and I almost miss the constant opportunities to help people. As an update I have been in contact with Nat Turner about applying for Extreme Home Makeover and I have written a letter to someone else rather important that I feel could make a significant difference in his life. He really was inspiration to me.
After being home for a week, I must say that it has been especially difficult summing up this trip into a presentable explanation quick enough for the short conversations I have had with everyone I’ve run into since being home. Even though it isn’t appropriate for short passing-by talk, I really want to let everyone know what it was like. I also must say that it has been extremely hard to convey how exactly I feel about the trip to people. When my friends ask about it they expect that it was more recreational in nature and so they don’t understand why I don’t exclaim about how much “fun” it was. How I feel about the trip is way more complex than just an adjective for fun, because it wasn’t all fun, and it wasn’t supposed to be. It was real. We were getting involved in real situations that real people are facing on a daily basis and the disappointment, the poverty and the amount still needing to be fixed is real. And in the end, we had to walk away from these real people, barely scratching the surface of what needs to be done for them and everyone living that way. It is such a contrast to our daily-pampered college student lives, where “the real world” is still in the distance, after college.