Last Days

Exactly three weeks from today I will step on a plane bound for America; my year serving in South Sudan will be finished.  I have mixed feelings about this but every day I'm becoming more and more excited to go home.  To wit, some of the things I've missed about America, and a few that I'm not particularly looking forward to.


Yes, please:
- Family and friends. Duh.
- Cheese, specifically mozzarella
- Temperature-controlled buildings
- Being able to buy anything I want, any time I want (within reason, of course)
- Cheese, specifically cotswold
- Clothes washed by machine that don't constantly smell musty
- Paved roads
- Buying meat from the freezer section of the grocery, instead of a shack by the side the road where it's been sitting in the sun for 2 days
- Consistent, reliable internet service
- Cheese, specifically pecorino
- Postal / mailing / shipping services
- Fresh milk in my coffee
- Hot showers that last longer than seven minutes
- Good customer service
- Cheese, specifically brie
- A majority population that speaks my language
- Perfectly made things
- Wide-spread knowledge about hygeine and contagious diseases
- Garbage services
- Salad
- Have I mentioned dairy products?


No, thanks:
- the issue of parking, always
- always spending money, all the time, everywhere you go
- the bombardment of advertisements - buses, taxis, billboards, t.v., internet, at the grocery store, at stoplights where people wear costumes and toss signs in the air about discount mattresses
- the sexualization of everything
- traffic


See you soon...