Culture Shock

I arrived back in the US three days ago, and I'm still feeling a little out of place. It's weird to walk down the street surrounded by massive buildings. It doesn't feel right to walk into a store and have an infinite amount of choices and still not know or find what I want. I come home, and I'm not covered in mud or dirt. The strangest thing yet may be talking on the phone. I love talking to friends, but lately being on the phone just seems unnatural. The week I was in Nicaragua I got used to being surrounded by 11 people, loving them or hating them, and on Sunday when I was alone in my apartment I think I just sat there looking around waiting for the other 11 to appear. People keep asking me about my trip, and I would love to tell you about it, but I don't know where to start or how to describe it. I usually say "it was really hard, really good, but hard." The kids at the orphanage have unbelievable spirits. Most of them have lived through hardships that you and I could only imagine as a story line on TV. They still laugh, run, play and hug you until you think you have a child permanently attached to you. I would say we spent about 7 hours a day on average with the kids, and I've spent more time with other children in concentrated amounts like that. For instance, a week of babysitting one family, and I walked away just fine never looking back. Now, I can't stop thinking about last week. I was attached, and I think at least half of my heart is still in Jinotepe. I've been trying to decide the best way to write about my trip, and I think instead of a day-by-day summary, I will give you the stories of each child.

Miguel

Miguel is one of the harder stories to hear. I don't know all of the details, but from what I heard his parents were extremely abusive. They would chain him to a chair and beat him. Eventually, his dad threw him up against the wall so hard that he became permanently brain damaged. I didn't learn that until we had been with the kids for a few days. When Eric, the director of the orphanage, told me about this, I immediately started crying, and my blood got hot I was so mad. I wanted to find his dad and just make him stare at Miguel to see what he had done to his poor child. Miguel is still a very sweet kid, but he functions at an extremely basic level. Most of our conversations went like this:
Miguel: Hola.
Me: Hola Miguel.
Miguel: Tu?
Me: Yo?
Miguel: Tu?
Me: Yo?
For those of you that don't know Spanish, that's hello and then you? me? over and over and over. He loved to come up and hug you, and when I say hug you I mean attach himself to you. He would climb up on me and hug me so tight that I wouldn't even need to hold onto him. I literally played baseball with him hugging me the whole time. He loved for you to talk directly into his ear. After he had successfully scaled you he would grab your head and put his face up against yours and start saying "hola" over and over and over until you would talk back to him softly. At the beginning of the week I remembered hearing him having a "freak out" where he was screaming and crying so loud we could hear it all over the grounds of the orphanage. I didn't hear it for the rest of the week that we were there. I heard he had one freak out moment when we got into a van to go to the beach, but when we got home that night he was so happy and laughing so much that it made all of us laugh along with him. I don't want to pretend like it was always easy to be around Miguel. I think we all had our moments when we were frustrated with him, but I know for myself my frustration always came out of my lack of patience. He was always being himself, but I was not always willing to let him be himself. I got tired of having to put my hair back up after every time he hugged me, which was about every two minutes. But he would always come back smiling saying "Hola. Tu?"