Back in Miami!

All it took was a five and one-half hour airplane ride and my South American adventure was over! Yesterday Dianne and I had a rather uneventful flight from Lima, Peru to Miami and it feels like I have awakened from a marvelous dream. It was great to be greeted at the airport by my daughter, step-daughter and her husband, and my newest granddaughter. I have really missed family and it was a nice surprise to walk out of the International Arrivals restricted area to see them in the lobby and not have to wait for them curbside. It has been a full 24 hours with family as we had dinner with them last night and went back to their house for lunch today to visit with another long time friend who is almost like family.

But it feels strange to be back in my home in Miami. In fact, the initial feelings are that it doesn't feel like "home." It is the same house. My "stuff" is still here. My family lives here. But there was a "strangeness" to walking in last night. It is an early confirmation of what I was anticipating in South America that there will be a time of adjustment for me upon return. We are usually so caught up in the day to day "everydayness" of our lives that 8, 12, 16 weeks fly by and don't seem so long in the course of a year. Yet, in truth they are a significant passage of time. Twelves weeks is what I spent out of the United States, living in South America. It is a fourth of a year. Sixteen weeks is what I spent away from work on Sabbatical. That is a third of a year. A lot happens in those amounts of time. For me, a lot happened here at home that I missed. And a lot happened to me, that others, except through my blog, have not experienced with me. How all of this will mesh together to allow me to re-engage with my former life here in Miami will be a most interesting process. Probably as interesting, if not more so, as the Sabbatical experience itself.

For now, I plan to take my re-entry nice and slow. I do not plan to think too much about work or what I need to be doing when I return to work very much this next week. I plan to spend time performing some maintenance chores around the house. My wife and daughter did a great job taking care of the house in my absence, but some things, like taking down hurricane shutters put up as a precaution, they really cannot do. I also want to play at least one round of golf, it has been four months since I have swung my golf clubs. I plan to brush up on my Spanish lessons. Even though the last two weeks were spent in Peru, a Spanish-speaking country, most of our time was in tourist areas, where most of the service people we dealt with spoke some, if not a lot, of English and tended to assume we knew no Spanish. So, it was almost like being back in Miami two weeks early: in an environment where there was Spanish being spoken around us, but an environment where it was not necessary for us to know Spanish to function. In that regards, I am very glad I chose Argentina and not Peru for my Spanish language classes. I know I was surrounded by Spanish speakers and most of the 8 weeks I was in Argentina, it was necessary for me to know Spanish to function. It was truly an immersion experience that helped me learn the language. Based on my recent experience in Peru, I am not sure I would have found the same type of immersion experience there.

I also want to spend some significant time this week reflecting on my entire Sabbatical. I know this will be an on-going process, but I want to begin that process this week before work responsibilities begin to impinge on my time and attention. During the past 4 months I have done some reflecting on what I was experiencing, what I was learning, what it might mean for me moving forward. But now that I am nearing the end of the Sabbatical, I want to revisit those reflections, deepen them, and refine them. I want to begin to seriously contemplate what all this might mean for me moving into the future.