Umm, I have a cold.

These are the deepest thoughts I can muster right now:

I think my life and myself are much less complicated than I'd like to think they are.

I think liking to think I'm complicated is probably prideful.

I think people who think they're complicated people are usually pretty annoying.

Brief recap: I recently moved my person and two suitcases containing my material life for the past year from Pueblo Libre, Lima, Peru to Quakertown, Pennsylvanvia, USA. If you know me, you may be wondering how that's going. If you don't, you probably forgot all about it. I understand.

I've hesitated to write this first "How are you?" post after returning. Partially it's because I feel like I owe you all an honest, not just comic, response, and partially because I'm overly sensitive to pressure (okay, it's mostly perceived pressure) about what "reverse culture shock" ought to look like and the things I should be learning about my "experience." Doesn't that sound like I was shipwrecked o n an island or fought in a war or something? How has "your experience" affected you Dani?

There may be a lot to be said about the move and the things I've thought in the past few days. Most of them aren't at all original. Most of them even I have thought many times before. All the way from "You're throwing a bonfire? How amusingly American!" to "Does the American dream deserve all the flack it's been getting recently?"

And I've asked myself the same question that I know everyone's going to be asking for a few months yet, "How do you feel being back in the United States after a year abroad?" I've built it up in my mind. I'm overly analytical. I really want an answer.

But the truth is, I don't really know yet. The best I can do is say vague things like "good and bad" and "fine" and "okay."

Does that satisfy you? Not really? Well, you'll just have to settle for now, because I think I'm going to allow myself some slack to just go with the flow and not force myself into self-centered obsessing over the state of my adjustment. I'll just live and let the revelations come in little trickles or great big waves or not at all, as they wish.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean that I don't want to talk about Lima. I do. I really want to talk about it. In fact, I think people are probably already getting tired of me saying things like.,"In Lima, the toilet paper gets thrown in the trash, not the toilet!"

And I don't mean that you can't ask. Please do. I may give you a little recap of what I just said, but by all means...

It's just that, at least for now, I'm releasing myself from finding a good answer to the question, "How does it feel to be back?"

Maybe I'll just say, "It's totally unfair that I have to put up with a Lima winter cold and the PA summer heat all at once!"

This was a long post. I hope you skimmed ;)

I think I may have just over analyzed my need to stop over analyzing.