Now I'm Really at Home...

I think I mentioned earlier that I joined a couple basketball teams (one female, one co-ed). This has definitely been a highlight for me, and a nice way to spend my evenings during the week, rather than be couped up in my little room all alone. It keeps me connected and occupied, and more than that, it is the closest I get to feeling like I'm at home. I'm still very much an outsider in a very culturally different place. It's true, everyone laughs at me for not being able to keep up with the fast-paced Kittitian dialect; I still haven't grown accustomed to being woken up by roosters every morning (please I'm begging you, just thirty more minutes of rest); the generally assumed, unquestioned, and implied Christian religious belief is a little unnerving but simultaneously fascinating to see; and the racial diversity, or lack thereof, is quite the opposite to what I'm familiar with (having grown up in a predominantly white city in BC and then moving to multicultural Toronto).  

But if 'home' is a place where your surroundings can emanate something familiar and safe, making you feel connected, comfortable, and accepted as if you belong; a space that can identify who you are, and allow you to move and express yourself freely (or as free as possible) then truly the basketball court has been the only place that I can remember evoking anything close to that.  Although I don't play competitively anymore, the sport still manages to follow me wherever I go.  Whether its across the country or around the world, basketball finds a way of staying in my life in some facet. 

Looking at some other interns' blogs, I see I'm not the only one who has taken part in the world of sports while away. Check out Ardavan in Barbados playing and reffing basketball! Awesome! http://journey2barbados.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/a-life-time-memorable-experience/