Not strange, but still confusing...

The strangest thing about coming to S. Asia is that it doesn't feel strange anymore.

This is a good thing in the sense that it minimizes stress while traveling.  But the 'normal-ness' also confuses me.

The men staring, the car horns honking, the insane traffic never letting up, the electricity continually fluctuating, - it all feels normal.  Normal, that is for S. Asia. Take any one of those components and throw it into America and all of the sudden it won't feel normal or acceptable anymore (at least not in most places).

How is it that within 24 hours, I can be transported from one world to another?  So close, and yet so so so far away.

And yet normal?  How is it that something so foreign can feel so familiar?  And vice versa- when I return to the USA many times, those familiar things can feel completely foreign.  That begs the question then, what is truly familiar and what is truly foreign in the first place?  Perhaps both places are more foreign than I realize.

It still amazes me.  Getting on the plane in America, getting off in India.  What happens during that space in between that results in drastic differences on both sides?  And how is it that these stark differences feel quite normal to me now?

Something inside of me has always rejected the idea that these two worlds can exist in the same galaxy.

I feel the normalcy in both places.  But at times, in both places, I still feel lost.

Last night, the darkness of the night accompanied me in the taxi between the airport to the transit flat.  I looked around for some sense of constant on which to hang my confusion and curiosity.  I want something to connect the two worlds I try so hard to belong to.

And yet... try as I might, I know this world is not my home (Phil. 3:20). 

My longing for something more only indicates a deep desire for another world altogether (C.S. Lewis).