Now that I am working fulltime like a responsible citizen, Saturday is the only day I can go to the market, so it is in my best interest to capitalize on the opportunity whenever Saturdays allow.

A market routine was something I never had before Cambodia. It is something I might have gotten bitter over had I stayed on for those two more years - you know, the fact that I never got to make it part of my routine. This is one of the easily overlooked blessings, then, of being back.

When I get there I begin what I now affectionately refer to as The Trifecta by making a beeline for Rafiki’s African Deli where I make small talk with Roger from Uganda while my two meat samosas heat up in the microwave. I bid him well and then make my way up to Saife’s Middle Eastern stand, passing by Meck’s Produce where I make a face at Luke who has been working there for as long as anyone can remember even though he is only twenty or so. At Saife’s I get two chicken fajita wraps, or if they are out, I settle for a chicken vegetable roll.

There is normally a lull at this point.

Someone is talking with Luke next door. Someone who has never spent much time outside of Lancaster is grabbing their boring (but admittedly satisfying) all-American sub at S. Clyde Weaver’s. Someone is catching up with so-and-so they knew well at one point but have not seen in a couple years and they conclude their conversation by saying “it was good to see you” and that they ought to get together sometime, and I am eating my fajitas, having already enjoyed the samosas in all their raisin-and-curry goodness.

The final dot in The Trifecta is the place with the fresh-squeezed juice where I order the number five smoothie on the menu, the one with mango and orange and coconut and who knows what else. Most times, anyone I am there with does not have a plan like I do, no Trifecta or Quadrazoid or anything like that to speak of, so they wander more or less aimlessly through the market, and there is something to be said for this approach, but what this means is that I am normally finishing off my smoothie while others still find their food, and we normally all coalesce somewhere convenient, like where Andy’s parents sell horseradish on Tuesdays and Fridays. A couple of weeks ago, we happened to congregate in front of the pastry guy but he yelled at us for blocking his delicacies which have limited time to sell, so we won’t make that mistake twice.

After five or ten minutes, someone inevitably has to go here, someone else has to go there, and I head down to Prince Street Café to drink coffee and, like any good twentysomething, to make sense of life, and whoever doesn’t have a better plan accompanies me.

This is a routine, and it is (for now anyway) a good one.