These are a few of my weirdest favorite things

10/23 Weirdest thing I've missed from home so far: locking the bathroom door.
Life is pretty different here, from the US, in style. A remote islands in the Pacific, remote even by Islander standards, has changed so much for an Idaho boy, I'm sometimes oblivious to funny aspects of my day-to-day. Stuff I'd expect to notice, as an American. The bathroom door thing is an example. I took care of business either in a Western style bathroom or the jungle while in Woleai - increasingly the latter, as time went by - and in Houk we have an add-on stall I lock with a screwdriver. There's a hole drilled through the door to the frame to stick the screwdriver through. 
There's so many of these trivial yet significant differences - only worn a shirt once, for a couple of hours, in the past month; underwear is a rarity; children run naked all over the island up till puberty; I'm the only native English speaker for hundreds of miles; there's no access to news here; I start my shower in the ocean & finish by dumping buckets of well water over my head, but use Old Spice hair & body wash for soap. No streets just The Road; no running cars on Houk; the sound of a motor comes as a shock; cooking takes place exclusively over wood fires; I can barely understand 90 percent of conversations around me; I can hear the ocean breakers, birds and crickets wherever I go; fresh water is all from rain catchments; garbage is all over the island!
While I was in Chuuk lagoon for the first time, some other volunteers (Jesuit Volunteer Corps) poked fun at me for one of the baskets I got in Woleai. To me, it's a basket and basically a Micronesian shoulder bag; to them - and I suspect most Americans - it's a purse. I've bought into the Yapese way of looking at baskets so fully, I was dumbfounded that they didn't see mine as I do.
All this makes me wonder. If I see these little things so differently than other people from the US (who are living in the FSM, no less), than I saw them when I was in the US, what about the big things? Values, worldview, goals, ideals, appropriate standards of living. Part of why I joined Peace Corps was to broaden my perspective, but 'broaden' isn't the right term, I realize. It's too inclusive, as though I needn't change old perspectives to accommodate the new. That's impossible. Co-existence of how I see things now with how I saw them then can't be. So, will I be able to relate to folks back home when I return? I'm not sure. Makes me worry a bit, about who I will connect with and - more importantly - who I won't.
10/24 addendum: Watched a movie today, and I noticed something else kind of weird I miss from home. You know when you come home from doin' nothing, with nothing to do? What do you do more often than not? Go straight to the fridge, knowing you're not really hungry or thirsty & that even if you were, whatever you want isn't in there. I miss that. I miss opening the door, feeling the wafting chill, looking without seeing & closing the door with that ambiguous feeling, unsatisfied because you're too satisfied to want anything. How American. 
10/25 further addendums: clothes piled on a chair/the floor, planned for re-wear. You only pile clothes here if you feel there just aren't nearly enough cockroach nests in your room. I miss fifth graders only being naked in-class in nightmares. Also, I miss people knowing, caring about and practicing proper handling of books.