Culture Shock

To say that it is weird coming back to the US after living in Ghana for a year is an understatement. I thought (very naively) that since I had gone to Rome in February that it would not be a big deal for me to fly into JFK and just walk around like I had not been gone for so long. Let me tell you how wrong I was.

To start with security has changed completely. I thought that it was difficult before I left but it is so much worse now and lets remember that I flew a few weeks after September 11th out of Dulles Airport. When you fly out of the Ghana airport they hand check all of your bags and then they go through the metal detectors and then you get not one but TWO pat downs. I was shocked.

Then when I was going through customs and immigration neither could believe that I had been living abroad in Ghana for a year by choice. I told them that I was a Peace Corps volunteer and then it made since to them.

When I got into the Jet Blue terminal I walked around for 10 minutes trying to decide what to eat because I wanted it all and knew that if I ate all of it I would be to sick to fly to Florida. When I did order my pepper steak from the Asian bistro, I did it from a computer screen and no one said "it is finished". When I got my meal it was right, hot and great, with OUT MAGGIE cubes.

The entire terminal has wireless Internet and it is so fast that I can work on 5 things at once. I am not sure how I am going to go back to the other dial up connection speed at my house in the village.

The true test of how much I freak out will come when I go to the grocery store and see how much my favorite fruit costs. If strawberries are under $20, I might just pass out in the store.