Sharing the Experience

Today is Thursday the 16th. Ryan arrives in about two hours and we're going to head out to pick him up. Erin and I are very excited and can't wait to see him again. We've got some tentative plans, but that's really about it, nothing secured, no reservations because Ryan specifically said he wanted the "Todd and Erin Experience." I'm not sure that title validates quotes or capitals, but I'll put them in anyway.

The last few days in San Salvador were great. Our host, Meg Galas, was absolutely wonderful. She opened her house in the way that you usually only dream about. We came in Saturday, but she was at the beach surfing, so she told us to just head on in and spend the night. Which we did and was wonderful. Sunday she came home, and we had decided that in order to help pay her back for her generosity, we would cook her dinner. So we spent a few hours making bean burgers. It was a bit difficult deciding what to cook for someone you've never met, but going off the food in the fridge and the Vegetarian magazine on the table, we decided that it would be best to leave the meat off the menu. So bean burgers it was. And luckily, she liked them. Whew!

Monday, we finally were rested enough to leave the house and explore the city a bit. So we walked an hour and a half down to the bus station to figure out our ticket to Managua. King Quality was $47 one way, Gulfo was $27, but looked really run down for some reason. We decided that the 5:30am cheap bus was what we would take, but we would buy tickets the next morning. So from the bus station we walked another hour and a half to see a museum. After a too long walk in the way-too-hot sun, we get to the musuem and, of course, find it closed. Did the guidebook say it was closed? Yes. Of course. We just didn't look before we started the marathon hike. Oh well. We'd head on back to Meg's to start cooking dinner. But on the way back, we found the Ticabus station and found a $30 bus ride that actually looked decent. So we decided that the 5am departure on Tuesday was what we would take.

That night was a great night hanging out with Meg. We made fresh spring rolls, half veggie and half a scrumptous combo of saucer peaches and black velvet nectarines, and on the side some stirfry noodles, all of which ended up tasting delicious. But the conversation was the real gem. Meg bestowed on us her nuggets of wisdom, honed over years of living abroad and in the states. It was great to talk with someone who struggled with the return to the states and could easily understand how frustrating and confusing it can be. There are a couple of concepts that she encapsulated incredibly well in a couple of simple phrases.

Talking about how strange it is hear the issues people complain about in the states when you're back is difficult. The example I used was someone getting remarkably upset over a latte being made incorrectly. She aptly pointed out that the experience of a place comes in a cycle. When you're travelling, you're always at the beginning of the cycle, experiencing everything new, for the first time. This helps you focus on the positive aspects that interest you. As you spend more time in the place, the experience grows in depths where you are forced to understand aspects that aren't necessarily so positive. Part of the problem of people who remain in a place is that they can get stuck focusing on the negative aspects rather than the positive aspects that they initially saw, and which traveller often only see. The angst expressed about the latte is because that's what we feel we can control. I feel like I'm explaining this terribly, but at the time it made a lot of sense.

One of the other things that we talked about was personal relationships. The difference in relationships that necessarily change when you move or go travelling. The concept that, upon returning to home or reconnecting with a friend, while the daily details of life can seem like minutae compared to the daily life on the road, it is actually just as important. An event in the daily life at home matters as much to our friends and family as an event in our daily life abroad. If we deeply care about the friends, we therefore deeply care about what happens in their "regular" life. This is more difficult than it sounds. It is something that takes energy and focus, particularly because you don't get the story as it develops. You get the highlights, the major points, when often the fun and the drama is in the details. Those details are the ones that are laughed over a Wednesday night poker table or a Thursday night shuffleboard game. They're not necessarily viewed as important when you're there, you're just chatting away, but when you're not there, it becomes very important. The regularity of the encounters gives the relationship a level of intimacy and detail that is difficult to appreciate until you lack it.

I haven't done justice to Meg's zenlike understanding and discourse on these topics, but suffice it to say that she put these topics in a little more order. Topics which are something Erin and I constantly struggle with and are confronted with as we travel and particularly when we return.

To wrap this up, we decided to stay with Meg for one more night, until Wednesday. So the next day we went out and bought our tickets for the Ticabus, leaving at 5am and getting in around 4pm. After walking around to a couple of hotels, we ended up at a nameless hotel. We're going to head out, grab Ryan, and head down to Leon, where we'll spend a few nights hanging out. I expect it to be at least incredible, if not fantastic. It may even be ludicrous. Well, let's be realistic. It will definitely be ludicrous.