Tuesday June 30

I’ve been gone from Senegal for 5 days now and I’ll admit I’m already kind of missing it. As sad as that sounds… I thought I’d be thrilled to be back here in America, in my childhood home, with my family and friends. But it’s weird, because I am not the same person I was when I was here the last time. I don’t have a life here now. My life is THERE now.

Tonight on the way home from the movies I made M. stop with me at Hess’s gas station just to go in and see what they had, and discovered that approximately half the shelves in the entire store were stocked with various forms of CANDY. I proceeded to stand in front of the biggest candy aisle for at least 5 minutes, pondering the best sugary snack choice to make, overcome by options, until I finally chose a Reese’s peanut butter bar-type thing to go along with the Sour Patch Kids I’d already chosen. But then I spotted the coffee corner of the store and M and I decided what we really wanted was iced coffee, so after a complicated process… we managed to mix ourselves satisfactory iced coffee drinks, at which point I decided I didn’t really want the candies after all and only paid the Indian guy at the counter for our two drinks.

It is strange to only have to take one shower a day, and to go to bed smelling as good at night as I did in the morning, strange and wonderful. It is strange to look at a 6-foot-wide display of candy and not to have an overwhelming desire to eat any one of the options in particular.