I never wanted to leave China, but after the 16-hour plane trip across the Pacific Ocean, I was glad to be back in the U.S. Amazing
how we can zoom around the world in just a matter of hours when at one point, we weren’t even sure that the world was round or how big it
was. I wonder what other unimaginable possibilities lie ahead in the future.
       It was my first time ever to come to San Francisco. I was a little surprised that the customs officer asked to search through my suitcase
as I was coming through customs. Not the ‘welcome home’ I was expecting. Was it because I fit the terrorist suspect profile, or was it
routine? That was something I wasn’t sure of, and I was too fatigued from the trip and lacked sleep to pay careful attention to it. As the
customs officer was rummaging through my suitcase, he noticed a collection of DVDs I had brought with me from China. “What are
these?” he asked. “Oh! Sorry! I forgot about those! I replied nervously as I waited for him to bust down on me over the pirated copies. “That’
s alright.” He said. “Just don’t bring them next time.” As he continued digging through my luggage, he found a picture. It was an old
picture of Summer that she had once given me. She was wearing a white dress and some sunglasses and had a smile on her face while
holding onto a tree. “Is that your friend?” he asked. “Yeah … that’s my friend.” I replied.
       It was sad for me to think of what had happened between Summer and I. We had so much potential for a dynamic and fulfilling
relationship, but it withered and nearly died completely because of distance and different ideas. She thought I was too paranoid about
her getting too close to other guys, and I thought she was too fickle, flirty, and careless. It turned out that I was the one who was right, that
her attitude was leaving her in the open to be targeted by men of all ages, single or not. She was too childish in the mind to realize it
until she had already broken the relationship. Either that, or she knew what she was doing on some level, and thought she was capable of
controlling every man around her according to her own will, including me. I have heard many stories to suggest that the latter might be at
least partially true.
Stosh
       The first person to contact on my agenda was an old friend of mine named Stosh. I met him back in Madison when I was still in
elementary school during a summer camp. He was very memorable because he often wore a pair of shorts that had cartoon spiders all
over them. He became known to all of the children at the summer camp as “Spider Pants.” I saw him again a year or two later walking into
the movie theater with his parents to see the first “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” live-action movie, but he walked right past me without
noticing me. Then, another year later, he ended up in my homeroom class at what was once called Van Hise Middle School. It seems
like there was no way to avoid meeting him in that small city. After middle school, we went our separate ways. He went to East High
School, and I went to West High School. He had grown up mostly with his friends that went to Marquette Middle School, and wanted to
rejoin them after some distasteful experiences at Van Hise. He and I were part of a small group of people that most of our classmates
considered to be losers. There was nothing cool about us. We were just plain and ordinary children trying to cope with living with others
who had very different ideas about life. After the first two years of high school, I decided I needed a change as well, and transferred to
East High School. There are many things that could be said about what happened in those days, but to sum it up, I’m sure that was the
place I belonged to for an uncountable number of reasons. After high school, my friend Stosh went off to college in Minnesota for
architecture, and I stayed in Madison for a while until I was ready, both financially and mentally, to begin my first adventures on my own.
He would come back to Madison during the holidays and visit his family and friends. Around the same time I went to China was when he
moved out to San Francisco.
       Before I called my friend, I had to get some currency exchanged. I had exchanged all of my U.S. dollars for RMB a long time ago. It
was sad seeing my pile of money that I earned from Wongas shrink down to almost nothing. For the first time in my life, I could have been
considered wealthy (not filthy rich), but that state quickly disappeared after coming back. After I called him, Stosh told me his address
where he invited me to go that afternoon. It was about noon when I arrived at the San Francisco airport. When I took a taxi that was in
front of the airport, I felt so much relief. Back in China, it was very difficult to communicate with the drivers because of our mutual lack of
understanding of each other’s languages. And it felt very strange to see all of the cars in the street driving in straight lines without honking
so much and seeing people crossing the street at crosswalks only, instead of seeing everyone doing as they like and only watching out for
themselves, and sometimes not even doing that. Everything seemed to be moving at such a slow pace and in such an organized way. I
didn’t have any kind of culture shock though.
       I only had culture shock twice in my life. The first time was when I was 16 years old on a trip to Mexico with my father. We stayed in
Tijuana for a few hours. I’m not sure if it was exactly culture shock, or a sense of danger that I had that pushed me to tell my father to
leave as quickly as possible. The second time was when I moved back home from Florida when I was 21. My hometown was much
different from Lakeland, Tampa, and Orlando, where I had been spending most of my time down there. I felt like an out of place hooligan
after I returned because I was surrounded by hooligans with guns and all kinds of danger down there, but I carried that perspective back
with me to Madison where these things were not happening to the same degree, though after my “awakening,” I either was able to identify
it more easily, or I attracted these things because that kind of outlaw awareness had been put into my consciousness and thus I projected
that kind of experience onto my environment. China was such a safe and somewhat mundane place that it didn’t rock my psychological
state and sense of balance too much. I definitely felt much sharper in the mind than ever, though, as previously, I relied on mostly
strength and instinct to get me through life. But I had to develop my mind in a different way to accommodate my teaching job and the
very intelligent people that I was dealing with regularly in China.
       Stosh’s girlfriend was living with him in his apartment, and she was the one who answered the door of the apartment. Stosh was still
on his way home from work, but he arrived there within  20 minutes. It was great to see an old friend that reminded me of the stability and
continuity that can sometimes be found in this world even in times of great change and chaos. I was going to stay for only one day, so we
decided to spend most of that time playing X-Box 360 games. He and I always had a great time playing video games since the
beginning. We played the ultra-realistic boxing game called “Fight Night.” I was laughing because after every knockout, they would show
a dramatic replay in slow motion with spit flying out and a sour looking facial expression as the head of the boxer was getting knocked to
the side and play background sounds that went straight to your equilibrium and put you in the zone to feel as disoriented as the one who is
getting knocked out. Stosh was very good at the game, but whenever I knocked him out, I would try to punch him two or three extra times
in the head as he was falling to the mat to add insult to injury. I don’t like hurting people in real life, but in video games, I’m a punisher.
We also played the thrilling game called “Splinter Cell,” which was about storming the enemy’s base and completing mission objectives
silently if possible. It was one of those games that could be played using a modem to connect to other players. You can also hear them
speaking to you and to each other. The Internet is often a virtual garbage dump for people with great emotional baggage who can’t say
what’s on their minds in public, so of course their language was foul. We played these games as though no time had ever passed in our
lives. With true friends and family, it is almost always possible to pick up again where you left off the last time, but it’s necessary to push
the fast-forward button to catch up to the present time quickly.

Off to see my Mom
       The next day, I went to the bus station by taxi in the evening by myself after I said goodbye to Stosh and his girlfriend. It was time to
visit my mother, who had moved to California about a year before I went to China. While waiting at the bus station, I began to notice that I
wasn’t in the same safe place I had been in for that year. The people had quite a different look about them, a more casual and street
smart look. One woman was talking to me the entire time about some humorous situations her friends had gotten into before as I was
waiting for the bus to Sacramento. I didn’t remember people being so friendly to me before, but then again, I had never been to San
Francisco before.
       My destination was Davis, California, but the bus only went to Sacramento. I wondered what Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was
doing as I arrived in the small city. He was probably sleeping. I tried to get a hold of my mother on the phone to come and pick me up,
but it was very late, and everyone was sleeping. I had to take a taxi to Davis myself and find a place to wait until morning
came.                        
       After coming to Davis, I went into a gas station and had a conversation with the clerk there. He was a young man perhaps slightly
older than me from the island of Fiji. He had sympathy for my situation, so he agreed to let me stay there for several hours until my family
could arrive to pick me up. They had some nice snacks there at the gas station that I had forgotten about. Ice cream cookie sandwiches
and Arizona iced tea and other things I used to love.

My mom, my stepfather and my brother, Miles
       My stepfather John and little brother Miles arrived shortly after daylight in the family van to pick me up from the gas station. I thanked
the clerk for letting me stay there, and he said, “See you around.”
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling
Coming home