Home for Graduation

May 3 – May 9

     Greetings from the United States! This week, I had the wonderful opportunity to go home and attend my brother’s college graduation. The flights were long, totaling a day of over 12 hours from Santa Marta to Bogotá to Miami to Pittsburgh, but I met new travel friends and enjoyed exploring the airports along the way. Seeing my mom, dad, brother, and other friends and family was almost surreal, especially meeting my parents at the airport.

     I then spent the week running errands, meeting with friends, and spending time with my family. We did a lot of shopping and even stopped by our local farmer’s market. I did a few Goal 3 things, like make arroz con coco and agua panela for my family, and I admired many aspects of US culture, especially astounding customer service and my family’s ability to walk around outside safely after dark.

     Graduation was very American (as is every graduation) and I was excited to be able to find my brother amid all the similarly dressed graduating students on the floor of his university’s convention center. I am so proud of all that he has done and I cannot wait to see what he will do next! Congratulations, Class of 2015!

- My flights from Santa Marta to Pittsburgh may have made for a long day, but booking the flights was easy, since one of the benefits of being a Peace Corps volunteer is that you have access to SATO, the travel agency that helps members of the military and other government employees travel around the world. The people at SATO are extremely helpful and even gave me several itineraries, so the day would be as little of a headache as possible.

- Going home? Don’t forget Goal 3! Of course, you will tell family and friends lots of stories, but take the opportunity to bring stuff home from your host country, too. In addition to your stories, that could be food (though keep customs rules in mind) and souvenirs or even recipes and local cultural traditions (like dancing).

- Agua panela: agua + panela + jugo de limón. Everything is “to taste,” so you will want to figure out your own ratio for water to panela to lime juice. Also, I brought panela from Colombia, since I could probably buy it somewhere in my area, but I do not know where.

- US customer service is amazing! Some places in Colombia also have wonderful customer service, but here, it seems to be almost universal. Everywhere I went, I could not help but appreciate how much people were doing to help me (or anyone around me).

- Don’t forget to keep your US cards updated! For example, I needed a new debit card so, while I was in the country, I got a new one. That was one of my examples of amazing customer service – my bank got the card in the mail to my house quickly and it arrived before I left. So, check expiration dates on your cards to make sure they will still work when you get home.

- I have also begun to appreciate the opportunity to be safely outside after dark. In my Colombian city, by the time the Sun sets (around 1830-1900), I am usually in my house and make it a point not to go out again, unless I am meeting friends somewhere to eat or see a movie or something like that. In that case, I would always take a bus before 2000 and a taxi after that, being careful to call taxis, rather than hail them off the street, if I was returning home around midnight. Being able to walk outside after dark is a blessing not everyone has, so I was glad to be outside at any time of day at home in the US.

- Another aspect of American culture that seems to me slightly more common in my home country than on the Coast of my host country is that we are frequently very kind to strangers. I have met many nice Colombians who will help you figure out where you are going, explain something you do not understand, or even just want to stop and talk. However, the extent to which Americans go to help strangers sometimes surprises me. My mom and I were grocery shopping, when we noticed that an elderly gentleman had hurt himself on the bathroom door. We stopped and helped him cover the bleeding and, soon, a few more people were around us, getting paper towels and the manager, so he could bring a first aid kit. It was nice to see so many people stopping to help a stranger.