Things that felt immediately normal after arriving home:
Being with family and friends.
Driving.
Staying up late.
Throwing the toilet paper in the bowl instead of the trash can, although I still have the urge to flush before wiping and to fold the TP before discarding.
Things that felt weird — at least initially:
The thing that hit us strongest when we first landed in Cincinnati was how green everything is. It took our eyes a minute to adjust to all the color.
The heat — although we were only a day’s drive from the equator, it never got this stinking hot in Peru and certainly not this humid.
Not having to think through my Spanish script before going into a store.
The crush of carpet under the feet.
Drinking milk at will.
Drinking water without worry.
Despite all the wonderful food we’ve had since then, our most memorable meal at home was our first — pork barbeque, baked beans, sweet corn. Our taste buds reawakened to these flavors we hadn’t tasted in nine months. The other meal that struck us the same was of all things a turkey sandwich in the airport with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and banana peppers. We’d had several delicious chicken sandwiches in Trujillo and countless delicious avocado sandwiches but no cold cuts. Now all the food just tastes normal and our normal Peruvian dishes seem foreign again.
Maybe the weirdest thing is how quickly everything starts to feel normal, within hours really. That and the knowledge that just a week ago we were still in Peru. It seems like a month.
Just knowing that it’s all over.
