no more questions, please

the countdown begins.

when do you leave Cape Town?

10 days.
yes, 10 days. my friends tells me to stop counting, but is it possible?
everyday i have to look at what the date is, and automatically, without even trying, i know the amount of days i have left remaining in Cape Town. it's inescapable, because once i remember, that means i know. forgetting time is great, but once i remember the time;  i just started counting again. so really, i can't help it. and believe me when i say it, i just can't help it.

everyday i'm reminded of my leaving South Africa. so many raised eyes with so many open-ended questions asking me to be open with my answers.

what do you think of South Africa? how do you find Cape Town? do you think you'll come back? do you miss home? will you miss it here? how do you feel?

love it. great. definitely. of course. no doubt. mixed. --- those are my short-answers, and in that order.

i hate those kind of questions. don't get me wrong; i ask those same questions from time-to-time. they're the inevitable questions that are asked upon circumstances such as these, leaving a temporary "home" only to return to the mainland from which you came.

they're open-ended questions, but are they really? i get the feeling that people expect a simple, easy answer to a complex, compacted question. there's an unwritten script i'm expected to follow. no more and no less. but i rather answer their questions by posing my own:

where do i even begin? how do i even begin? do you even really care to know what i mean by saying that i "love it" or that "it's awesome"? what else do you expect me to say?

and then there's the questions i ask myself in passing times as these:
how do i make the most of my day? what should i do? where should i go? will this be my last time being [insert name of place here]? should i spend this money? do i even have the money? should i say bye now? will i be able to do this again?

i hate those kind of questions. because i feel like so much of what i do (or contemplate doing) has to be carefully weighed. i'm trying to make the most of my time, but in the process, do i waste time?

the questions mentioned already don't bother me as much as
those questions that will be asked when i return to sunny California:
how was South Africa? what did you do? how was the World Cup? do you miss it? how do you like being back? do you think you'll go back?

for these questions, i really worry about where and how i'll begin. i'm still trying to find the right way to describe it to myself, how much more to someone else? i worry that i'll simplify my answer to the so-called "open-ended questions" with short answers. "absolutely amazing."

i fear what is called the "chameleon effect." i won't go into detail what it means, but in this context, i fear that i won't really be understood when i get back from "being abroad."

part of me wants to be asked what is meant behind that short answer "absolutely amazing," yet there's a part of me that doesn't want to explain everything behind it. there's so much i can say….

they say that "a picture tells a thousand words" and i've taken hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. on top of that, i've written pages and pages in my journal entries. additionally, i wrote multiple essays and posted blogs. beyond the pictures and the texts, i have memories. stored memories, unforgettable and unable to capture through photos or written words. not even just written words, but spoken words…

why am i sharing this with you? no more questions, please. i don't know. maybe you're hoping for some cheesy statement or some witty pun, but i got nothing except these thoughts right
now.

now,
now.
that's all the kind of counting i'm doing these days.

so just let me be.