Reverse Culture Shock

I realize I haven't quite finished the posts about my trip, but I will get around to it eventually.

I have been back in the US for just under a week now. It is good to be home, it really is, but it is so weird. Reverse culture shock is crazy, almost worse than just regular culture shock. When you first arrive in a foreign country, culture shock is expected. Everything is new, different, foreign. Eventually though, it becomes routine. Coming back after an extended amount of time away is so strange. You expect to be comforted by the familiar, but instead everything familiar is foreign at the same time. Everything I do, think, feel, is followed by a "Oh, weird, I have been doing this thing this way my entire life? In Mexico we do it this way." It is a strange, almost unsettling feeling.

Other than getting around to writing about the last three days of the Oaxaca and Chiapas trip, not a lot will be happening in this blog until late January when I go back to Mexico for Part 2 of the year abroad.

The Great Adventure: Day 6

Day 6

We decided to check out Cañón del Sumidero, and take a boat ride through the river that runs through it. Not being able to find much info on hour to get there ourselves, we took a taxi to the national park where we thought the boats departed from. Our cab driver, Alex, was super interested in our lives. He told us that not a lot of Americans come to Chiapas (especially to Tuxtla), and asked us all about everything about the States during the drive there.

We got to the park, which is basically a road leading up a steep hill. Along the way, there are five miradores, or lookouts, which look down on the canyon. We kept crawling up the hill, and were starting to get really confused about the whole boat idea. Finally we got to the top, and there was nothing up there. Lisa asked someone about the boats, and we found out that they leave from a different city on the outskirts of Tuxtla. We had our hearts set on the boats, so we negotiated a cab fare with Alex to the city.

At the docks, we had to wait about thirty minutes for enough people to come to fill up a boat. We were ambushed by curious workers, they said we were the first people from the States they had seen in a very long time. They were even more curious than Alex about life in the States.

The boat ride through the canyon was incredible. We saw lots of crocodiles and a monkey or two! About halfway through, we reached an area full of trash. During rainy season, trash washes into the river and gathers in certain spots. Our boat driver said that at some points of the year, the trash is so thick that boats can't pass through it. It was absolutely heartbreaking.

After the boat ride we called up Alex to bring us home, then spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the house. We worked on the Thanksgiving dinner for the next day, watched Friends, drank some beer, and met a few family friends that had come to the house for their daily group yoga class.

View of the canyon from one of the lookouts