Back in USA

Once again I've gone too long without updating. I've started writing a couple entries, but they have yet to be finished. I'm back in the States having finished my term of service in Peru (I flew home July 28). I recently got a new laptop computer, which in the future might make me a better blogger, because I can just take it out and start writing the moment I feel inspired (like now).

Thus far, being back in the States has been weirdly normal. I felt like I heard about or was dreading "reverse culture shock" or "re-entry shock" for 3 or 4 months before leaving Peru. I was feeling ready to be totally disgusted with American culture and to feel out of touch or alienated by my friends and family. So far that's not the case. Over the past few weeks, I've been relatively busy traveling to see friends and family from home in Atlanta, my college in San Antonio, TX and my job over the summers during college in Montreat, NC. In each of those places, I've had many more good/positive experiences than bad. At times I certainly miss my host family, fellow YAVs and my brothers and sisters from the churches in Lima, but overall I am happy to be "home."

As I've mentioned before on my blog, at the beginning of September I will start another year of serving as a Young Adult Volunteer. I will be working for a homelessness agency and living in a shared house in intentional Christian community with four other Young Adult Volunteers in a small, working class Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Hollywood, California. Ironically enough, I feel like THAT is where I may experience the most "culture shock." For the past year, I lived a modest middle class lifestyle (by Peruvian standards) among fairly "mainstream" evangelical Christians. During the week-long YAV orientation and at the beginning of my time in Hollywood, I will be living an upper-middle class white person's version of a working class lifestyle among liberal/postmodern "evangelical" Christians ("evangelical" in the "let's take back this term" sense). In Peru, I feared being judged if I went out to a dance club or suggested that women could be leaders in church. In the US, I fear being judged if I use a gender-specific pronoun to talk about God or throw a plastic bottle in the trash can when there's a recycling bin right next to it. I've spent a year around people worried about making sure their families well-fed, healthy, happy and successful as opposed to being around people for whom those things are a given, so they're instead worried about fighting injustice and liberating the oppressed.

When it comes down to it I'm still squarely in the liberal/postmodern Christian/simple lifestyle camp. The difference is now I'm a little more self-aware and a little less arrogant than I once was about it. Thanks for reading, and I'll try and keep updating as I continue to wrestle with all of the theological/cultural tensions that have emerged for me over the past year.