Crowded streets and Latin Beats

Even though I feel as in a fog as I´m recovering from a sudden onset of the Traveler´s sickness (look at me--I´m so PC!), my experiences so far in Xela have been just what I imagined.

It´s a great thing to return to a place you know. Coming to town, I knew how to get to our hostel, how to direct other travelers to their destinations, where would be the best place to find licuados, and how to find the other salsa club when the first one gets boring. I like knowing Xela, for the most part, and that she welcomes me with her scents and crowded sidewalks and familiar street corners and Xelapan and cars thumping Bachata...

It has been difficult to return and not expect everything to be the same as I left it. I walk into the cafe or the coffeehouse and I expect to see people from last year there. I look for the familiar faces on the street. And I miss the routine I had when here. That said, though, I also love that this is different. I´m with great friends now, we´re at a new school which so far has been great, we´re staying in a new place, so I get to see now a new face to Xela.

I am fully here, and what a great experience so far, despite the extremely premature sickness. However, when you travel or take an adventure with friends, there are the possibilities of a theme song arising. This is not something you can direct; it just falls into place. What, to our regret, seems to be coming up as that so far is that song by Doughtry ¨I´m coming home¨ or whatever...it´s so cheesy and I don´t want to remember this trip by that song, but there´s a sense of humor there. While I feel a little as íf I´m coming home to Xela, I also know that going home to Aberdeen will perhaps feel a little more like the place where I belong.

Sidenote: I just realized that what I thought were typed as apostrophes are actually tildes. I had a lesson on tildes today and my teacher --an elderly man named Nery-- drew a large version of a tilde for me. Not sure why...but I think that´s pretty cool.