30 December 2009
The end of the year finds me exactly where I started this year: in Cedro Galan, Nicaragua. A whole other year has passed and seems to continue racing onward with such speed that all I can do is jump into the current and ride the waves of change.
Though I left Nicaragua four months ago, as I walk around my old neighborhood El Planetarium I feel as if I had never left. Visiting friends from the community feels so natural and normal that it is as if I have just had a weekend away. Of course, there have been small changes – a new house on the corner next to El Farito, a baby who has learned how to walk and talk, graduations from high school and elementary school and the passing of other grades, kids who have grown a couple of inches, but overall friendships have come back with ease and conversations are interesting and full of both fun and serious topics.
It has been amazing to see and play with my dogs again. I was afraid they wouldn’t remember me and in turn spring at me in full attack mode, but they remembered me and are so affectionate that I can hardly leave them. I went for a run with Cola this morning and saw the same guards at their posts in front of the houses in my neighborhood. We greeted one another and they even remembered my name! The two yippy dogs are still at the top of the hill, and still don’t realize that Cola could swallow them whole. Walking in the neighborhood felt so good and right that I struggled at first to put my finger on exactly what it was… and then it came to me: home. This place is home. Everything about it calls to me, and I love it.
