Ghana, there and back, I made it. Before leaving, I mostly told people that I was going to Africa (not Ghana specifically), not just because not everyone knows where Ghana is, but because it was still abstract to me. Not yet a place of its own. That has, of course, changed.

I'd like to talk all about my time there, about the beautiful, open-hearted, intelligent people I met; the lush rainy-season jungle landscape in the part of the country I visited; the intense markets of Kumasi, a city of over one million inhabitants; the malnourished, HIV-positive children, as well as the rest of the children, the way they chanted "Brunni! Brunni!" (Awbrunni is a somewhat affectionate word for white person in Asante Twi) as I walked down the street.

But those things and so many others will have to wait for additional processing. For now, I've got a documentary to make, 3,000+ pictures to sort through and edit, a deadline for work to meet, and a life to re-acclimate to. Culture shock is a very real thing. It's difficult to reconcile being in a place where a one-room house with a cement floor and a tin roof, no electricity and no running water is considered nice house, with coming back to a ridiculously luxurious home, a consumptive and decadent American lifestyle. My head is still kind of spinning. And my belly.

Also, I lost two people who were very dear to me while I was gone. Missed the passing of and funerals for a great aunt and a former roommate. Tough stuff to deal with on top of everything else.

Regardless of all those things, I'm glad I went on such a difficult but wonderful trip. Travel is always worth it to me, to experience another way of life, another environment. I was simultaneously inspired and dumbfounded by the people and the things I encountered; it's amazing that I find words for any of it right now.

I spent two-and-a-half weeks surrounded by Christians and emerged the same heathen that I've always been. The most emotionally difficult thing was a total lack of personal time. For that, I woke an hour earlier than most, every day at 5:30 or 5:45, to sit on the front porch drinking coffee and writing in my journal, watching the day begin again under the huge Ghanaian sky.