wonderful and amazing and hard.

As soon as I got home from Liberia, approximately 20 people asked me the same simple question: "How was your trip?" That's a simple question without a simple answer, so I finally settled on this response: "It was wonderful and amazing and hard. I am so, so happy to be home."

And then people usually stared or typed something like "........." and waited for me to elaborate.

The truth is: I am still figuring out how the trip was. I'm still figuring out which parts were wonderful and which parts were amazing and which parts were hard. It's difficult to sum it all up because how do you sum up a trip where you met inspiring people and also saw a dead body lying in the street? How do you sum up a trip where you made children laugh and also heard heart-wrenching stories of infidelity and domestic abuse? How do you summarize poverty? How do you summarize gender inequality that makes the American glass ceiling look completely insignificant?

There were highs and lows, sunsets and cockroaches, tears and laughter, and everything in between. It feels like I lived two months in those two weeks.

I am still piecing it together, still crafting the story---His story---before I share it here. It's coming in bits and pieces and will likely be told throughout small posts for the rest of the year.

Until then, this is what I know for sure: my trip to Liberia was wonderful and amazing and hard.I am so, so happy to be home.