Who understands?

For my Teaching Language Arts class, we did writer's workshop. Well, this is my favorite piece, and I cried when I read it in class yesterday, but I think that was mostly because of how tired and stressed I was. It's kind of cheesy anyways.


Who Understands?
The cold is quickly approaching the mountain. Autumn is beginning, and as I look out my window at the fog that seems to blanket the entire world, I am reminded once again of my years where there was no fog, no cold, no Autumn. It doesn’t seem right to be chilled to the bone, even wearing four layers of clothes, while the sun shines merrily up above.

The sun is meant to bring warmth during the day, just as the absence of it at night should bring a chill to the world. I now understand why visitors to my homeland never realized how much colder it would be at dawn than at dusk. Even still, the dawn of the coldest “winter” morning in my world, is not half as cold as the mid-day of a chilled October day on Lookout Mountain.

When I return to my home for Christmas break, a part of me always expects it to be freezing cold and wet when I get off the airplane. And yet, I am always wrong. Instead, I step out into the cool, dry evening air and immediately smell the nearby sewer outlet. The temperature is forgotten as I take a deep breath, and realize that I have returned to normality. Visitors wrinkle up their noses and think, “What is wrong with this filthy country!”, but to me the smell means home. I am back. Perhaps it is simply that the 30 hour trip has worn me to the point of insanity, but I think it is much more and that the world that I grew up in is such an integral part of me that even the ugliness is beautiful to me.

The differences between this-my home country, and America-my passport country are endless. There is no good way to describe them to an inexperienced outsider. Both worlds have their own beauty and ugliness. Both worlds are such a part of me that I love them both, and I don’t know where I’d rather be.