Home again, Home again

Home again, Home again, sort of, always, never, kind of. This is the problem about making your home in a different country, but always planning to return. The problem with having loved ones all over the world is that you are always torn.
I am recently back from visiting my family in the U.S. I am very glad that I went. I actually got to be invovled in peoples lives. Which is a huge treat for me. It is terrible to miss big events becasue you can never get them back. Hopefully people are only getting married once, but then I miss 100% of their weddings. Maybe people will graduate from something again, but doubtful and unnecsary.
But travelling and being home with the people that I love has taught me something which I have suspected for sometime, that home is not a place.
And it is not as I have joked my backpack either, which I do carry around with me like a turtle shell, and was very upset when the airline lost it for 24 hours. But my home is not a place or a thing but a feeling. The feeling of clam, belonging, safety, wholeness and the feeling of being understood by someone, whether I am in the place I grew up, a ubiquitous latte-land, a car, or somewhere in nature where there aren't even any buildings in sight.
So yes as a world traveler I have become torn and confused, but I am also home more often and completely than most.

Love Story: Peace Corps Style

So my week at home went by uneventfully, which is good. I rested and relaxed and at watermelon, literally that was an activity of mine everyday. It is the beginning of watermelon season and I love it. They are stacked up in piles six high on every street corner. They are organic and delicious and I have replaced drinking water with eating watermelon.
Anyway, on Monday I went to the engagement party of my friends Mandi and Andriy. For those of you who don't remember, Andriy was my Ukrainian Language and Culture teacher in Peace Corps training and Mandi was in my training cluster. They have been together since the end of training, I have spent every major holiday and birthday with them and a whole lot of random tuesdays and drunken saturday nights.
A few months ago they decided to get married. But in Ukraine there is no such thing as a formal engagement, you just decide to get married, ask the permission of the family and then eventually get married. There is no word for the time between asking permission and getting married and there is no reason. So we always used the term "engagement party" sparingly as there was a cultural issue. Mandi's family: mom, dad, younger sister, older sister and brother-in-law are all in Ukraine right now. And Andriy's family threw the party in Smila, his home town in central Ukraine.
At the party Andriy comes out dressed as a Cossak, a traditional Ukrainian Warrior, in huge red "aladdin" pants, and embroidered shirt and a blue blelt. He got down on both knees and officially proposed to her and gave her the ring. He proposed in Ukrainian and I translated for Mandi's family, they were all crying. Then Mandi answered him in English and our other cluster mates Jeremy and Sharece translated for Andriy's family. It was a wonderul moment, they Andriy asked Mandi's parents for permission to marry her which they whole-heartedly gave. And he presented them with a traditional kind of sweet bread that has dough flowers baked on the top and wrapped around it is a Ukrainian embroidered towel, white, black and red, that will be wrapped around their hands at the wedding ceremony.
The less romantic part of this story is that they have to wait for the visa stuff to clear before they can plan the wedding which will be in the states.
After wards we ate, drank and danced until we passed out in the not so very tiny hours of the morning, of course the power went out around midnight so we drank vodka by candel light. Did I mention the party started a 5pm. It was great fun and a truly multi cultural experience to meet Mandi's Family and Andriy's Family at the same time. And quite difficult to keep translating as the vodka shots piled up.
Now I am in the airport in Kyiv waiting to hop a plane to Warsaw, and then Chicago, and then La and then Palm Springs to go to the wedding of two Americans.