In love with America

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
--T.S. Eliot

I am surprised and delighted to discover that my favorite people abroad are usually Americans. Or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that the people I best connect with are Americans. There's an ease in talking to them; they unwrap themselves like a gift readily. There is no sense of hesitation, or suspicion. In the older ones I seem to recognize an old, comfortable friendship almost immediately. They are rarely negative or cynical, and often seem like the most joyful people I meet on the road. The more positive interactions I have with them, the more primed I am for positive interactions with the next Americans.

While I can only wonder if this is as much a reflection of myself as of the people I meet, I accept it. I hope it is not an indicator of an increasingly insular nature, but rather an acceptance, finally, of the best in my own culture.

Immersed in progressive - sometimes radical - politics, social change, critiques of my own culture - how easy is it to develop a sort of loathing of the vile, arrogant, aggressive, selfish aspects of my country and its peoples that eclipses, obscures, the good?

Perhaps the best part of this trip is I've realized I really like my peeps; it makes me thankful to return to the US. My curiosity for living abroad is somewhat diminished, for the first time in my life. While I once embraced the loneliness and wonder peculiar to being the only (or one of the only) foreigners in a town, I believe that has lost much of its charm. And while it's best perhaps to learn and remember what one loves, it is just as helpful abroad to learn what one doesn't love.

What I love, right now, is my American friendships. My family. My country: its parks, its peoples, its quirks, its freedoms and its challenges. Even when I've loved the United States (and sometimes i haven't), ever since I was 19, my savings every month went into a travel fund. I am surprised to discover that I am perhaps released from the samsara of the travel bug, and with shackles undone, my commitment to the US upon my return may be more permanent than its ever been since adolescence.

Sapa love

Today the light washes over Sapa at daybreak, sun burning fierce and bright as if in apology for its absence the past three days. It is blinding, this sun, and powerful, transforming the cheekbones of street vendors into burgundy apples.

On my trek the clouds bunched in dizzyingly tall dark indigo pillars. Rain unloaded intermittently, as if the skies were unable to make up their mind to rain or clear. The red clay trails turned into slippery ski slopes; any steps worn into the path from weeks of travel were eroded. Even with the help of bamboo walking sticks, the trek was perilous, turning attention from the landscape to the feet. When we finished, I sat outside our homestay, witness to a shadowplay of cloud on light.

Today the Cat Cat hotel's Hmong guides, mere shadows of women at 16, 17, 18, walk into the hotel in what look to be clubbing clothes. I had no idea they even owned anything other than their traditional clothes. Za, my guide, walks up to slap me a high-five; I notice her eyelids are cooled a deep blue, and her slips shine with pink gloss. Talk about staged authenticity! Now, she's wearing a pink denim miniskirt; her underwear burn an outline through the skintight fabric.