54 and counting

EDIT: 55
Thats how many books I've read since I've been in El Salvador. Actually probably tonight or tomorrow that will be 55. As you can tell I am a reading junkie, its how I pass time here. And we aren't talking little dinky books here, some of them are pretty substantial like The Fountainhead and The Count of Monte Cristo, while others are the 6 Harry Potter books. Still I feel like I'm at least expanding my mind in my down time and it keeps me busy.

As for my trip to LA I'll sum it up that no matter how long I spend in the US, it seems to fly by. The result of being there is that LA will always be familiar to me and it will always hold a place in my heart as where I grew up, but for now I felt just a little out of place there. Its the feeling when some place is no longer exactly home. I felt like I was driving around a ghost town or something, so many places hold memories, but the people connected to them are no longer there, or are some other place in LA. I used to get that feeling a little bit back in college, but often enough some of my friends were around, so the feeling wasn't so complete.

In term of my cultural reaction to being in LA, I wouldn't call it reverse culture shock, but it puts things in stark contrast. There are things that being in the US we take as the base level of necessity which very much aren't. Things we have learned to take for granted which I never want to take for granted again in my life. Things like constantly running water, let alone hot water. Or trash service. I want to remind myself in the future that I had lived without, and it really wasn't so bad. Being back here I like it, but the US has made me lazy. I can't seem to bring myself to hand wash anything for the time being having been so close to washing machines and dish washers for a short while. I'm sure that rugged defiance will fall apart in the next day or two as I run out of passable clothing and need to cook again.

After every small trip back to see my friends and family it puts the cultural and economic differences into stark contrast. During training we all say we experiences culture shock, but I really feel we were eased into it what with the first few days in a hotel, living with a family, the training center, other trainees and whatnot. By the time I was completely immersed in and participating in the life here I was pleasantly becoming unaware of exactly how different it really was because my sense of comparison was fading. Now that I can jet straight back to my community and my life here I am allowed a better comparison that I hope never to forget and I think I would be hard pressed to put into understandable words except with lots of time and lots of pages. I don't know I'll ever have that urge.