For the past few weeks, I've been driving around Atlanta, attending events, working at my church, and going to my regular gym classes with an extra sense of wonder. Each place I go, I'm struck by the fact that I am known here. I can randomly run into someone at the store and the man who works the front desk at the YMCA on Monday nights remembers my name. These things may not seem like a big deal, but they are to me because a year ago, I still felt alone in this big city. 

While my mom was in Ethiopia, we had talked about her coming to visit me in Georgia and so that could backpack a section of the AT. Then, my cousin, Richard decided to get married, so we happily changed our plans. It was one of the best weddings I've been to and it was so, so good to be with my extended family. After the wedding festivities died down, my mom and I drove up to Lake Tahoe for a 4-day backpacking trip in the Desolation Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

When I was booking my flight to go see my parents in Ethiopia, the cheapest and fastest route ended up being through Doha, Qatar. Qatar Airlines was having amazing deals to try and convince people to extend their layovers so I thought, "Why not? When else would I go to Qatar?" So instead of taking a direct flight back from Ethiopia, I spent two days in Doha, Qatar. The last time I was in the Middle East, I was 19 years old in Egypt during the Egyptian revolution. 6 years later, I managed to find myself alone again in another troubled Middle Eastern country, this time in the middle of a boycott by all its surrounding neighbors. Awesome. 

In many ways, Ethiopia looks exactly like the stereotypical portrayals of Africa that Americans are used to—trash on the streets, abandoned buildings, dirt roads, farm animals throughout the city, and mud huts in rural villages. It was almost shocking how much it fit my expectations. It didn’t take long for the existential crisis to set in.