There I was, walking under a very hot sun in Jackson Avenue, sweating a lot and with enough time to think about the small important things. That was my first day in Oxford Mississippi, and I decided to go to Wal-Mart. I asked the first person I saw how far it would be and he told me "it´s just around the corner you can walk" after my two hours walking I thought that maybe he laid or I didn't understand him. Almost immediately I start to think about my father in law, he came to United States to study with a scholarship on the 50s to get his engineering degree, I believe one of the reasons I always wanted to come was because of his amazing stories about this country, some ones really good some others not so much. The communication and language always was a big issue for him.
One story I remember was about the shower, when he tried to ask to the faculty personal at his dorm in the University of Michigan about hot water in the bathroom was impossible for him to understand them. He spend 2 weeks bathing in a really cold water on the rude cold weather of Ann Arbor, he only take like 3 showers a week, until one day a French partner saw him shaking and almost purple and realize that he didn't know about the small lever he need to use and this French teach a Venezuelan how to take hot water showers.Maybe that day I needed more orientation, a couple of weeks after I found out that I took a very wrong route and lost a lot of time and effort, definitively 60 years after I was living the same communication and language problem!
I start thinking -because was a very long walk- about my arrival to the United States, I was trying to understand the guy seated next to me on the plane, he was from the army and was coming to Memphis to see his little baby after ten months. He knew his son the day he was born and had to go to the war the next day, he was so excited that I couldn't understand him very well; I realized that maybe emotions may affect the communication. When we land he told me "Welcome to America", I just could answer back “Welcome to you beautiful life”, but his words stay in my head for a long time that night.
Welcome to America, but I am not already in America? I was pretty sure that I have expended all my life in this continent, why is he welcoming to my own house? There was the first time that I realize that we are in a very big, beautiful and different continent; it starts in "La Tierra del Fuego" in Argentina, crossing all South, Central and North America, until Alaska and Northern Canada. It's amazing how different we Americans are, just need to cross a border to see the differences between the traditions, landscapes and even languages. My city in Venezuela is just one hour from Colombia and is very interesting how many things can change just by driving that hour.
I think the most beautiful thing about this powerful continent is that even with our differences we can enjoy it in many ways, as my Mentor Cabral would said "The beautiful America" the place where everything is possible. I always love to see the magic of this continent, for example I always return to Ecuador and sit in front of the Cotopaxi, the sacred Volcano, especially on Sundays, I love to wait for the grays whales in the Baja California and swimming with Dolphins in Xcaret, I love the sunset on Machupichu and the sunrise in Bariloche. I love to hang out with the Taraumaras in the “Sierra Madre” of Chihuahua, I am always excited about New York where you can find the best and the worst people in the world together in the same City, also there you can meet with the art, the MET, the Guggenheim. I love to go around the Sonora dessert to empty my head and full my heart, there was this guy that was like a leader in the community he was creating a school to unlearn, he said "could you imagine the big space that we will have in our heads if we forgot all the stupid things that we learn in school", that always reminds me about Bernard Shawn, he said "My education was so good until was interrupted by the school".
I love the colorful Valparaiso and the quiet Bogota, where Garcia Marquez mothers said, my son has to be very smart, because won a Nobel prize on a history that other guy told him. I am enchanted with Washington DC where you and always find knowledge and history for free. I love to drink a "Mojito Cubano" in la bodeguita del medio, the heart of La Habana Vieja, one time a guy in Cuba was sleeping on the street and I asked him where is your favorite place and he told me this one, because is where God send me, nobody can now better than him where should I be.
In Santo Domingo I always find affection and merengue (that is a crazy version of affection), in Costa Rica I find people who live happy without Military Forces, and in Toronto I find the beautiful white snow.
But no matter how beautiful exciting and different every place in this continent is, I always have to return to my beautiful town, my special place, the place that put me my wings to go around the world, my town where the poor people became rich for revenge and the rich people became politics for boring. My dear town where you use the door to welcome friends, not to close it to the enemy, where every day you can have a deep and meaningful conversation with a total strange. There is just one Police and one Stealer in my town, so every time something is lost we know that can be in only two places. My dear town where the party is in our heart and the love is in the street.
Maybe beginning this new adventure in Oxford by taking a 2 hours walk just to buy a toothbrush and water make me see how beautiful is this continent, I am proud to be American. I love to learn all the differences and traditions of the different countries but most important, this experience is giving me the chance not to only know my beautiful continent but many different continents, cultures, tastes and people.
I hope to have the chance to know and walk around the others continents the same way that God allow me to walk around America.
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