Initial Acclimitization

Stepping back in time, here is a bit of story…

When I arrived in Kathmandu, I had already been gone from home for 36 hours. Three days later, I felt like I had been there for a month. So much had happened already: I met about 50 people, I learned new places, new foods, new streets and buildings. I had to figure out new toilets, new ways of dealing with electricity, internet, air and sleep. I learned how to be a female person in Asia, which, by the way is a whole different animal than here in the US. I can lead just fine, it’s the following that I have a little trouble with. But the whole thing, every step of every day for those first 3 days was new and different, and a cultural shift in the largest sense.

I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Clint and John both remarked that it felt like a month in 3 days. When the trip was over and I was back at home, I shifted time zones again and unwound all of the cultural shift that had taken place over the previous time. I have been home 6 days. My hubby remarked this morning that it felt like I had been here a month. Of course he said it in the most positive and supportive light: “She’s just slipped right back in where she was.”

But now it feels like a month since I have seen my Nepali friends, and I am left wondering why. So I pick apart the reasons that time seems to stretch so extremely when shifting between cultures and spaces. When I travel inside the US, it doesn’t feel this way, but I remember my trips to the Caribbean and Central America being a similar experience. The learning-while-traveling process tends to lengthen life in some respect. And I love that. Life is and will always be too short.