Notes from the other side of the world...

The very next day after completing my last final for the second term (2 down, 3 to go...), I found myself on an airplane heading overseas to Taiwan on business. I have a funny feeling everytime I arrive in the country of my birth. I liken it somewhat to the feeling of being an under-evolved "cultural amphibian." What do I mean by that? I think of a fully-adapted cultural amphibian as one that is at home in both Eastern and Western cultures, linguistically, habitually, and in most major aspects of daily living. In some sense I am there - I speak the language, I look the part - I fit in among all my fellow native Taiwanese brethren. However, I find myself under-evolved in the sense that my language skills (or lack thereof) leave me high and dry. I have mastered living the earthbound life so much so that my terrestrial lungs don't work quite as well under-water, and I find myself coming up short as I try to adapt to my familiar yet, not altogether comfortable surroundings. Have I gone past the evolutionary tipping point, as it were? Is my destiny set such that I cannot go back to from whence I came - as in Thomas Wolfe words "you can't go home again"?