So Fresh and So Clean.

I've been home for 24 hours now, and I'm convinced that my bug bites itch more at home than they ever did in Central America. I think because I'm actually clean here. Somehow, always being covered in sweat, dust, and grime made the bites more bearable when I was travelling. I actually used soap yesterday and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I also got my new drivers license since my purse was stolen in Nicaragua. My mullet is forever immortalized now. Yipee!! I studied the license picture with interest in the car on the way back. I haven't seen a mirror in almost a full month, and I'd forgotten what I looked like. Oddly, I don't look that different without makeup. Or at least, not discernibly so from my memory of myself in college photos. A little disturbing, considering that the makeup industry makes a fortune every year off of girls like me. I wandered around Barnes and Noble this afternoon, wearing my Panama shirt and the same hiking pants I've been wearing for the past month. It's so hard confronting my closet whenever I first get home from travelling. It's just so large and there's so many choices that I don't want to deal with it. My travel clothes are so comfortingly familiar and safe to choose from.

I also went shopping for a new wallet, since the temporary wallet I bought in Nicaragua after being robbed is not going to make the cut back in the States. Having a hologram Winnie the Pooh in my back pocket will hardly inspire confidence among my patients when I'm a med student. I hate wallet-shopping. They're always so expensive, and I never like the wallets available. I had a hard time buying anything in fact. It all seemed so expensive and so unnecessary. The only things I bought were soap (which I left behind in Montezuma), a back scrubber, some anti-itch cream, and body lotion. All things I would've bought in Central America anyways. I looked at the beautiful woman at the DMV with her well-manicured nails and perfectly done hair, and instead of feeling intimidated and hyper-aware of my own slovenliness, I just felt... indifferent. Like her and I were different breeds of women, and I just happened to have shaggy hair and untrimmed nails with dirty under them. I itched my bug bites nonchalantly while my dad glared at me and told me it wasn't appropriate to expose my calf like that in public. Not even for a bug bite. We're so... structured.

I spent the entire evening in a tank top and windpants, without a bra, sitting at the kitchen table at home. With a tube of anti-itch cream beside me. And I ate a can of Pringles, which made me feel nostalgic for Costa Rican bus rides. Pringles were a staple of my diet in Central America, since they came in handy for long bus rides and sudden midnight cravings. My new roommate's been calling me so I can fill out the lease and credit check application, and my dad's been asking me repeatedly when I plan to start packing because I'm moving on Sunday. He asks me why I'm so disorganized.

I don't know why I'm so disorganized. I guess because I feel like you can't really plan life. Like the Costa Rican buses, life never runs the way you think it will. It doesn't go on a schedule. It leaves when it feels like it, "around" 8 AM or so. Give or take half an hour. And it arrives when it feels like it, sometimes with your luggage, sometimes without, sometimes with your bum intact, sometimes not, sometimes with a flat tire, sometimes not, and sometimes not even with the same bus that you got on at the beginning of your trip (especially if it breaks down halfway through and you have to switch buses). Usually though, you get on the bus as a solo female traveller, and by the time you get off, you may not know where you are, or even whether this is the right stop to get off at but you do get off with friends that you've made along the way. People to go with to the new hostel, people to share a cab ride with, people to find their way with you. Because hey, even if we get lost, it's all part of the adventure right?

Yes it is, says Apple corporation, as they charge me an additional $300 to replace my stolen ipod. And adventures, however disorganized they may be, are sadly also expensive. Looming ahead of me is the structurued doorframe to Medicine. On August 1st, I start Orientation. And then I'll have to be organized, and responsible, and all those things that I didn't have to be when I was travelling. Boo...