Back in The States

So I have been back in the U.S. for a couple days now and I have to say I'm not happy about that fact at all. My trip was amazing. Being back has been like waking up from the most wonderfully awesome dream ever to a painful reality that I hate.

As far as the trip went I'm still not sure how to write about it. So many things happened that were new experiences for me. I want to make sure I have all of my thoughts in order before I try to talk about it. And I have doubts. I have a million little doubts floating through my head about everything. I've never been in this sort of situation before where I wanted so badly to be somewhere else and didn't have the ability to make that happen. It's causing me a lot of anxiety and pain in my heart.

So I guess I'll just dive right in and start from day 1.

It started with me waking up early at my parents home in Detroit. We went to the airport where everything went smoothly other than a crabby security guard giving me a hard time about the belt buckle I was wearing. I found the one place in the Detroit Metro airport where you can smoke and sat down with a Red Bull and a couple of cigarettes to get myself ready to fly. Once I boarded the plane a man came up to me and asked if I would mind switching seats with him. His girlfriend was in the seat next to me and he wanted to be next to her. She did not speak much English so being the nice person I am I said "Sure". That's when he pointed to the row in front of us and said "My seat is just right there by the window, in first class."

That was pretty awesome to get bumped to first class just by luck. So I was given a first class seat by the window (I can only fly comfortably if I'm in a window seat), a lot more leg room, a free breakfast, a pillow and a blanket. It was very awesome.
The flight was boring and I tried to study my Spanish notes while on the plane. I thought that I had most of my words mastered but realized I didn't when we landed in Mexico City and I had to navigate the airport with an hour or two before my flight to Oaxaca and I had no idea where I was going.

After walking through customs very smoothly and with only minor language troubles I was out in the airport free to wander. The customs girl that I had to talk to kept asking me questions about where I was from and where I was going. For some reason my nerves and excitement confused me and I answered where I was going when she asked where I was from, and vice versa.

The Mexico City airport is a big place. They don't have maps of the different terminals laid out for someone to easily find anything. I ended up having to ask directions and I had to do so in English because I was very nervous to try and ask in Spanish. The employees at the airport were very nice and helpful though and I found my gate very quickly once I got their help.

My flight to Oaxaca was smooth and quick. The whole time I watched the clock on my MP3 player counting down the minutes until I would arrive and see my boyfriend. The excitement inside of me just grew and grew.

Once at the Oaxaca airport I got my baggage scanned at another customs area and walked out toward the exit. There were a ton of people standing waiting for their friends and family to exit customs and meet them. Jose and I had talked about him making a sign for me with an inside joke on it so I could find him easily. I looked around and saw no signs for anyone. I also did not see Jose.

I started to walk toward the exit figuring maybe he had gotten stuck in traffic or something and was running a little late. I decided I'd wait outside in the sunshine and 80 degree weather for him. As I was getting closer to the exit I saw a familiar face walking toward me. The face of a woman that I knew I'd never met but she also had the look in her face like she knew me too. She walked up and asked if I was Lorn. I said yes and she introduced herself as Christina, Jose's cousin. She told me that Jose had some big trouble and that's why she was here to get me at the airport. I found out that she is the sister of one of the people Jose was living with when he was in Chicago. I figured that was the familiarity I saw in her, she reminded me of her sister.

We walked to the car and she drove me to meet Jose. We talked a little until we arrived at some place, I the whole time had no clue what was going on or where Jose was. My nervousness and anxiety just grew and grew the whole time. We pulled up to our destination and Jose's mom came out to greet us with Christina's son Kevin who is roughly 8 months old. We said our hello's and she got into the car with us. We drove up the street a little farther and parked the car. Jose's mom handed off the baby to Christina and she got out of the car.

Where was Jose!?

After about twenty minutes of sitting in the car quietly I heard a voice calling out "STELLA!?" Our inside joke. I looked behind me and Jose came running up to the car and I got out and we hugged and kissed and it was perfect. Until he said "Ok, hold on" and left me again. After about an hour we moved the car again and went into the store to get drinks, while moving the car Christina handed me Kevin and asked that I hold him while she drove. I'm not much of a baby person, I don't like to hold them because I don't know how. They're so small and fragile I'm always afraid I'm going to hurt or break them.

Finally Jose and his mom emerged again from some building that said something about a doctor on the front of it (which had worried me that he was sick before I had actually seen him) and she got into the car with us, he got into his car with some older man and woman and he drove off, we followed. The man and woman eventually got out of the car and Jose kept driving, we kept following until finally we pulled over to the side of the road and he came and got me and my bags out of Christina's car and moved us into his little 2001 Jetta.

We drove to his house where he told me that he was having some trouble because of a friend and the law (I'm not going to explain what it is because it's no one's business but everything is fine and he's not a criminal, it actually has very little to do with him but Mexican law is different from U.S. law.) and that he had to go back later to talk more to the lawyer.

We dropped off my bags and picked up his mom to come with us to go back. We sat outside of the lawyer place for a couple more hours talking and listening to music on his i phone.
After all that we dropped off his mom and got some food.

My very first day in Mexico with my boyfriend and I sat in front of a lawyers office all day. It was pretty anti-climactic but at least I was there, and he was there. We were finally together and in my nervous anxious little brain that was really all that mattered. We were together again and I could already tell I wasn't going to want to leave. But my departure date would loom over me for the rest of the trip making things very difficult for me.

But we eventually went to bed and I slept like a rock. My head filled with the perfect images of this beautiful place I would spend the next to weeks living in, and the time after those two weeks trying to figure out how to get back to faster.
I'll update more later about the rest of my trip but just know that my heart is heavy today. As I sit here and write all of this down my heart is hurting for a far away place and a far away person and it's all causing me fear and confusion. I'm scared to wait out the next few months. I'm afraid to find out how this will all play out and I'm even more afraid that it wont work out the way I want it to.