What's Missing

Walking around Xela everyday, I find myself missing certain people from various segments of my life. Standing in front of noted landmarks, experiencing totally new things, or being in quirky situations, I miss their companionship and the rare, seemingly eternal connections humans experience when they get the chance to explore foreign places with other people.

Before I left the States, I wrote to a friend about the semantics (at least in my mind) of missing people. I think we often miss people for they roles they have played in our lives, but on some rare occasions we can also miss people for the roles they have the potential to play in our lives. I realized today that sometimes we can miss places for the same reasons.

So tonight, I’m wondering what parts of Xela I’m missing in a haze of linguistic insulation (at this point, I’ve estimated that I understand about 25% of what’s going on around me). Saying that, I find that I’m already discovering parts of this culture I’ll miss when I’m gone.