Home again, Home again

Can’t believe our whirl-wind visit through the midwest is over - one successful defence, one successful wedding, LOTS of fun visits with great people, plenty of laughs, too much good food… and now we’re back in Oz. And we were welcomed home with a very enthusiastic Ani-greeting! And spring – Australia definitely shifted seasons while we were gone.

But it was a little weird coming back, and I think it was weird because it was so easy. Last year, after all the planning and a journey half-way around the world, we arrived to a whole new world and people met us at the airport and showed us around, and everything was novel and special. This time, after our demi-global voyage, we slipped right back in to life-as-usual. We got off the plane and caught our usual train with all the morning commuters (and were able to answer questions of confused travellers), we stopped at our neighbourhood ATM that we always stop at, we came home to our house and our dog, we drove on the left-side of the road without thinking about it (OK, maybe there was a little bit of thinking), we got groceries at “our” Coles. It’s weird to travel that far and have everything be so familiar – pick right up with your normal routine. At one point when we were walking out of the train-station with the schoolies and business people and we all looked like we were going about our day-to-day routine, I kinda wanted to stop and say “Hey – this isn’t our normal routine. We just got back from a big trip. Shouldn’t someone be saying ‘welcome back, mate!’ ?”

I guess I’ve gotten a similar feeling after returning from a long camping-trip or study abroad – after a big experience like that, you feel like something should have changed, but it hasn’t. It’s a little disconcerting that everything is the same and it’s so easy to fit back in. Re-entry to the US has happened enough that I guess we’re a bit jaded, so it wasn’t weird going back to the US, but it was weird coming “home” to Australia.