Home. What a strange word. It brings with it so many emotions, memories, ideas, and yet now, it's such a foreign word. Home? What is home now? Simply, of course, home is here, Cedarburg, WI, my hometown. But as I walked down those familiar streets today, it all seemed so strange, so out of place. It had stopped being the place I call my home.

Perhaps we can define home as simply the place in which we live, but I believe there is much more to it. It's the place where we feel comfortable, at ease, and at peace. This is not it.

But what is? This is a question I am now forced to ask myself. I've been uprooted from a place I felt a growing attachment to, and thrown back from whence I came. Here. I honestly feel this place, these surroundings are more foreign, stranger, less familiar, than when I first touched down in Paraguay.

Paraguay. What a country. I won't be foolish enough to say that Paraguay is my home now, but what I do feel is a certain sense of not belonging. I was a foreigner there, and though I did paraguayan things, and talked in the paraguayan speak, it's not something one shakes. Here, I feel just as much a foreigner. Though I know this place intimately, and it's people, the vast, vast majority are now placed at a certain distance from me. I can no longer be the suburban kid, the American that I was before. Why? Because I'm not him. We've grown apart. I left him behind, fretting over things to pack last August, and received word that he died some time ago. I sleep in his bed now, play with his dog, read his books, but I am not him.

It was not simply travelling abroad that changed me so, but rather a series of events which have culminated in the formation of the me that I am now. The normal exchange experience is always eye-opening, as is travel to any foreign country, but I had the great fortune to be given the opportunity to go beyond that, and really get know latin america on a much more personal level.

Friends, I've seen such things that I will never forget. There are so many things to be found in that continent, so many treasures, so many horrors. I can scarcely begin to recount the things I have seen and experienced, as not all of these things can be told in words, and in this language. And some of these things, I cannot even hope that you will understand if I could. There is something that can be seen in a man's eyes that cannot be transmitted by type or spoken word, by photograph or film. It's a moment in which your eyes lock upon his, and the souls mingle. There is so much there, and the burden these people carry within themselves is so great that in that gaze, it overpowers you, envelops you and crushes you. In some people, those eyes convey a deep saddness, or helplessness, or fear, but in some, for just a second, you touch something so powerful that it remains with you for a long time afterwards. I broke the gaze and managed to make my way back the truck, almost weeping, and he wandered back to his hut to get ready for the next 13 hour workshift, having given me all of his sorrow that I would take.

These things haunt me and inspire me, encourage me and send me to hell in every moment and every day.

I've stripped away what I was before, or what I had on the outside. Stripped away the suit of lies, egotism, worry, fear, and everything that powers this great machine I called home. When I left, I struggled to get a good grasp upon what exactly this country is. But finally I took a step back, and I've been stepping back since. I stopped defending my values and opinions of before, and let the world show me what it had. I saw. I saw the real consequences of what we have and do. It's a beast, a great machine that feeds upon our fears and worries and lies and deceit and greed, and takes us farther and farther away from who we truly are. We're caught in this irony, running away from the beast we feed.

I've found something better. It is something small, and I have not yet defined it, but I know it's there. It's a small flame, but if I keep it close, I can feel it's scant heat. And I must not mistake the bright plastic fire flickering in the fireplace for the one I know is real.

Thank you for reading, honestly. I'd like to speak to each person that manages to read this personally, and I mean that truly. As said, text is a horrible medium at times. This is one of them.