H is for Honduras

The problem with the first place you ever live abroad is the fact that you will forever be comparing everywhere else to it. Now, if your experience wasn’t particularly satisfying, this is not a problem. It’s easy to surpass unsatisfying. But if it happens to be the type of place that you fall madly in love with and which keeps getting bigger and better and more magical in your head as your time away from it grows longer, this is a problem.

That’s what happened to me in Honduras, and I will never know if things had been different if it might have been my Chile. But it was not, it was my second foreign country to live in after Chile. After Chile, enough said, I feel like.

I moved to Comayagua, Honduras one year after I had moved back to the states from Chile. It was a year of confusion and longing and wondering and I was determined to be abroad again as soon as possible.  I just had to get this pesky master’s degree out of the way. 

The day I was meant to sign my contract renewal at the alternative school I had just completed my first year of teaching at, I received notice that a school in Hondo had invited me to come teach with them.  My decision was hasty, but easy to make.  I wanted back out. I left two months later.

This was not my first rodeo, and I am sure I let all the other teachers for whom it was their first rodeo, know this.  There was simply no way I couldn’t acknowledge their naiveté, or innocence.  One girl, from Canada, had never left her country before. Seriously?

And yet, I think, a bit of the reason I called out their inexperience was because I envied it.  I envied that ability not to compare, the ability to see everything as new and fresh. I would never have that again. And I dearly missed it.

So instead, Honduras lived in constant comparison to Chile and always, always paled in it. The food wasn’t as good, the city was dirtier, my friendships in Chile were closer.  My time in Honduras left me leery of ever living abroad again. Would I ever experience something new without comparing it now to two different experiences? Would any other place I might move live up to the expectations that have been building and building in my head? Could any place ever be better than the Chile I created in my mind?

The truth is, I don’t even think Chile could live up to the Chile in my head. You can’t go home again, they say. You can simply return and hope that a little bit of what you remember remains, and a lot is even better than you dreamed.