Sometimes, I just can’t believe I went on this journey. This “life-changing experience” of spending two years in Mauritania, West Africa doesn’t feel like a natural change as was growing into adulthood. It’s more like waking up from a deep slumber, from a long, eerie dream, to find that my whole life as I once knew it has changed. Rip Van Winkle, Peace Corps style.

I’ve aged immensely; my body shows signs of the beating it took while living in a place with seemingly unbearable accommodations. Some loved ones and past relationships have died; friends now have spouses, kids, masters’ degrees and real jobs. Yet, here I am, a stranger to my own hometown, with no possessions and far from “settling down.” All that I have to talk about with those who are still around is this past life, this crazy dream.

With access to internet, I could catch glimpses of home while I was in dreamland. It’s just that this contact was distant and surreal, a flashing bedroom clock that manifests itself in a dream, appearing as the moonlight poking through the trees while you run through the woods with the monsters of poverty at your back; the inflected voices of emails chirp like the bats of the subconscious.

As I wake up in a panic in the United States, it has taken me a minute to make sense of it all, to figure out what things like “tweeting on an iphone” mean or what I missed while sleeping through the inauguration parties of the first African-American president.

I find myself back in this world that is both familiar and strange and that I, too, am grateful for that American passport. It’s easier to appreciate what I’ve deprived of, for example good food and a comfortable bed. It’s easier, still, to find joy in the often overlooked minutiae of life, like freedom of religion, gender-equality, enforced laws against slavery, and the right to a fair election.

It’s not that I was given rose-colored glasses, as my friend Becca said, upon leaving Peace Corps, but that America is a rosy place, compared to that eerie dream that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to recount in its entirety. I will say, however, that I can smile patiently while waiting in line in the air-conditioned convenience store, knowing that my turn is just as equal as the person in front of or behind me.