International Darius: Home Sweet Home

Hello World!!! ….It has been about a month since my last post. As always, this month has been filled with some amazing stories and adventures….(not including “the first few days”). For this reason, I will be breaking up this post into two parts. First, I’ll discuss my trip home and the first few days in America.

The Trip Home

Wow!!! The things I do (or have to do) to save money. I’ll just start by saying that it took me 29 hours in total to get from my home in Madrid to my home in Illinois. I’m pretty sure you could fly around the world in that amount of time. After all, my flight to China last May only took 14 hours. So what happened? Well first, I had to catch a low budget flight (again, trying to save money) from Madrid to Dublin, Ireland. In Dublin, there is an airline that will let you fly to Chicago for as low as $200 (maybe cheaper). Unfortunately, the flight only leaves early in the morning, or later in the evening. I couldn’t get to Dublin until midnight. Therefore, I was forced to deal with an 11 hour layover at the airport! Shortly after arriving in Dublin, my first mission was to get my bags and find somewhere to crash. I made my way to the eating area where I saw about a hundred people sprawled out on the couches and chairs in a deep slumber. All the good spots were taken! After walking around the eating area for about an hour looking for a place to sleep, I decided to settle down right behind one of the coffee stands. (Was I really sleeping behind a coffee stand LOL!!!). The floor was quite hard…but hey, I was exhausted. I took a few t-shirts out of my bag to make a pillow. Then, I arranged my bags so that no one could take them without me waking up. In less than 10 minutes out was out like a light in the middle of the airport aisle. It looked like a bum village LOL…. I woke up about 5 hours later with pain in my hip from sleeping on the hard tile floor only to realize I had another 5 hours left in the airport. To make a long story short, I wasted the rest of my time watching movies until my next flight…

The flight from Dublin to Chicago wasn’t bad at all, except for one small thing. We got about an hour into the flight when the pilot announced that there was trouble with the AC….So we needed to go back to Dublin. My immediate reaction was to be upset. “Why can’t I just be home!!!!” I thought. However, after thinking a bit more about the problem, I decided that I’d rather have all problems be fixed rather than taking a nose dive into the Atlantic! I realized that the pilot could have just been down playing the true problem so that he doesn’t incite panic in the passengers. We ended up being stuck on the plane for 2 hours while they fixed the… “AC”… problem. Seven hours later I had landed in Chicago! I was looking forward to the clear skies and the warmth of the sun….But as I exited the plane it was gloomy…and cold, in June? Hahaha…Oh well, I was still happy to be home.

First Few Days

So what were my first few days like at home?... Ok so by now I know you are expecting some wild and crazy story that usually comes along with my blog entries. Unfortunately, this time you may be slightly disappointed LOL. To be completely honest, over the first few days at home I did absolutely NOTHING LOL. While in Spain, I had made all of these plans about what I’d do when I returned home…and I did not complete a single one. The perfect picture that could describe my first few days at home would be of some lazy guy lying on the couch watching TV in his boxers…with a bag of chips and a remote LOL. At first I felt bad about my laziness. However, it only took about 24 hours (or 24 seconds) to rationalize why I couldn’t compel myself to do anything productive. Here goes….Within a span of 4 months I had:

• Successfully battled the flu (twice) with no medicine
• Nearly went hungry trying to pinch pennies
• Skipped lunch for 2 weeks straight (ate ham sandwiches for the rest)
• Had to think about everything I said before I said it (second language)
• Worked 2 jobs
• 6 day going away party (which all lasted til about 6am)
• Taught English to children (which sometimes turned into a battle)
• Experienced a 29 hour trip to return to America
• No need to continue right LOL

After rationalizing my laziness in this way, I didn’t feel so bad about the bag of Doritos and the remote control being glued to my hands LOL. It was time for some good ‘ol reeeelaxation! (Plus, I think something was telling me to rest my mind before I battled through an intense 2 weeks at the Yale Pre-MBA Leadership Program, but that’s another story).

The greatest part about coming home was that I could return to my comfort zone. As much as I talk about getting “outside of the box”, your time away makes the return that much better. After 2 days of being a serious couch potato, I decided to go pick up a pizza that my little brother ordered for the family dinner (so American LOL). This was my first exposure to the American environment in 4 months. As I got out of the car to get the pizza, I was shocked to hear everyone around me speaking English. Weird right! I had become so used to hearing Spanish, and then only hearing English when it was translated in my head. But now…information was going directly to my brain without taking a pit-stop at the translation station LOL. Moments later, I caught myself listening to someone’s conversation as we waited for our food. Now this is something that I had become accustomed to doing in Spain because I was trying to see if I could understand what they were saying. But now, I had no excuse. I had to snap out of my trance quickly before people thought I was eavesdropping on their conversation! LOL Sorry….it was just weird to hear something that felt so natural.

Another exciting experience I had was when I went to the T-Mobile store to get my phone turned on. As you know, the United States has a huge population of Spanish speakers. For 22 years of my life, I was never able to understand a bit of what they were saying. This had become a normal thing to me. The Spanish speakers would converse, and I would ignore the conversation because I had no clue what was being said. As I walked into the T-Mobile store to reactivate my phone, I noticed that there were other people being served. At this point it didn’t occur to me who was being served. It wasn’t until I heard the familiar sound of Español did my ears perk up. Clear as day I heard, “I would like to see the Blackberry… No the black one” At that point my eyes lit up, I could hear exactly what they were saying. After 22 years of being in the dark, I clearly understood the conversation. Now obviously this is something I could do while I was in Spain, but it was an entirely different feeling when applied to my home environment. Ok Ok Ok….I know all of this sounds a little corny…BUT HEY it’s my story!!! LOL

As you can see, much of my first few days at home were very anti-climatic. They don’t have the glitz and glamour that surrounded my crazy adventures in Spain LOL….Sometimes it feels good to get back to a more normal, less drama-filled (good and bad) lifestyle…… Of course, for me “normal” doesn’t seem to last very long. In a post to come soon, you’ll see how my Yale Pre-MBA experience completely flipped me on my head LOL.

P.S. Below I've posted some photos of the school I taught at, the classrrom, a few of the kids, and one final picture of me camped out in the airports