On Being Back.

I`ve been putting off writing this last post for more than a week now. To be honest, I wasn`t ready to write anything until now. It`s so confusing to be back in Canada. I`m still very much trying to make sense of what I just lived. I think this experience`s effects on me will become clearer and clearer as time goes by. I`m very happy to be back here with my family and friends. I appreciate them more and more every time I go away. I think about my host family a lot though. I feel guilty about all I have, about all the luxury there is here. I often wonder what they would think if they saw all of this. 
The thing I`m having the hardest time with right now is when people ask me how was my trip. It`s really unsettling because I`d have to sit down with them and talk about it for like an hour for them to begin to have an idea of what it was like. And that`s not what they want. They just want a hear a brief ''It was great'' answer. So that`s what I give them most of the time. 
I`m not sure how to finish this last post in a way that would describe the way I feel right now so I thought I would just copy my 4th (and last) Intercordia reflection question. Hopefully that`ll do it.
I also wanted to thank everyone who took the time to read this blog and those who supported me financially because thanks to you, I was able to do this program in the first place. 


Having been abroad now for several weeks, how have your initial impressions of your placement been altered?  How have your perspectives or feelings changed (or not) since you first entered the Intercordia program in Canada?  Write a short story (250 words) about your experiences to communicate these changes.


Having been back home for a week now, I`m still trying to make sense of everything I`ve experienced. When I first arrived in my community, all I could see was poverty. I was so shocked the first day I got to my host family`s house because I felt they had so little. I looked around and I was blinded by the lack of things. As time went on though, those thoughts and feelings from the first few days disappeared. I discovered a people and culture that didn`t really care if they didn`t have much. I found out that their values are surprisingly different than ours. They find joy in playing music, dancing in circles or talking to a neighbour. Sure enough, towards the end of my placement, I didn`t see them as “poor” anymore. In fact, they were quite rich to me. They were rich in family, in love, in compassion, in hard work. To this day I still admire them and aspire to be more like them. Since I first entered the program, I’ve learned that there is no way to expect what can happen in these kinds of placements. I now find three months is a short amount of time to spend with a family and then leave. Coming into this program, I didn’t really think about the effect we would have on these people. On our last day, I was the second to be picked up from my host family so I saw my friends having to leave their host families. One of my friend’s eleven year old host niece was so distraught that he was leaving, it was absolutely heart breaking. That’s when it occurred to me that we come into these people’s lives, without realizing how much we impact them and how hard it is for them when we leave. We go back to our lives in Canada but they stay there, hoping and wishing we’ll come back one day. It’s hard to think about but at the same time I know (or I really hope) that it’s better that we go there for a little while than to not go at all.