9000MilesFromNormal: America, you strange and gorgeous land!

Approximately seventeen months ago, as I prepared to begin this journey, I was faced with the simple task of coming up with a name for this blog. Laura In Ethiopia was already taken (damn you Laura Stills!). Laura In Ethiopia1 felt a bit lazy. After that, I realized I should be creative with the title. I did a quick search to find that Addis Ababa and Los Angles are a little over 9,000 miles apart. Having a hunch that 9,271 Miles From Normal would not exactly stick in people’s mind, I decided to round down. 9,000 Miles From Normal. Seemed reasonable. I was about to go to a distant land on a continent portrayed as equal parts harsh and romantic. Yeah, I’m far from home, far from anything I’ve ever known, and, more than likely, far from normal. I liked my blog’s title. I was glad to have been creative with it. It seemed fitting…

That was until my mid-service visit home.

America is silly. My first night back, I went to an ice rink to watch friends and family play hockey. Let me explain this concept. It is this giant, freezing room. In the center of the room, they build these boards about waist high. Within the boards, they flood water. The room is so cold that the water freezes. FREEZES. And then people play on the ice in various ways. It is like a billion ice cubes they are skating on. You know what I do when I get served a warm drink? I drink it. Do you know what I do when I roll my ankle and it swells? Nothing. Because ice is a precious thing that is hard to find. What do you lot do with it? Create a field of it. Just because you can.

A few days later, I went to get meat and cheese with my mom. First of all, I wont delve too deep into this, but it is pretty gentry-like to refrigerator your meat. But let’s move on to the cheeses. When I want cheese in Asella, I have to travel an hour by mini van stuffed with what feels like forty people, all of whom smell bad including myself. With a strange man practically sitting on my lap, I presevere knowing cheese is in my future. Note that I wrote cheese, not cheeses. I have one option and it is only at one place. Then I have another hour on a bus to get that lovely bundle home. I walked into The Meat House and they had cheese samples. Literally, they just gave out free cheese. Free. Cheese. I was so out-of-my-mind excited, I took a picture with the cheeses.

Cheese Tourist!

To give you a basis of comparison, this is the first time I ever petted a monkey. I am clearly more excited about the cheese

A huge portion of my time home was just meeting nieces and nephews. All my siblings seem to have plotted to have a lifetime’s worth of children during my service. Think I am exaggerating? Let’s take a look..

#1 Kingston

#2 Nicole

#3 Ben

#4 Natalie

#5 Matthew

#6 Artistic rendering of adopted nephew

#7 Artistic rendering of adopted niece

That sure was a lot! Think I am done? NO!

THERE IS A BABY IN THERE!

And let’s be honest, I come home in about nine and a half months. There is still time for more. In fact, at this rate, there is time for eight more. I live around more farm animals than people and I've never seen breeding on this scale before. America, what the hell is in the water!?!

This was the tone of my entire trip. What is this strange, wonderful land called America? Do the people there really think their way of life is normal? I am here to say that more people in the world live like me in Ethiopia than you in America. But don’t fret; this is not going to have a preachy made-for-TV-movie moral where I tell you to appreciate what you have. I simply wanted to explain the transition that has happened to me over the last seventeen months. Ethiopia is normal. I know what I am getting here. America? I barely remembered how to function there. I took pictures with cheese for cripes sake. I had to break a Target shopping trip into two trips because I got overwhelmed. From here on out, you lot in America are the ones in the strange romantic land. You are 9,000 miles from normal.