An observation on settling in.

Note: I don't plan on writing much of the material on this site in this form, but I needed to have a final thought on traveling to Europe.



If you have traveled for more than 2 weeks at a time, you'll understand this better from experience, but as for the rest of you...this is for you. It is a very strange unique feeling coming back to "home" once you've been away from it for so long. The people for one is a very strange component. You get a good feel for people's opinions of you when you come home, it's quite a cool feeling. I came home to three of my friends standing in my front yard waiting for me to come home. I had friends tell me they thought I had came home a day earlier than I had, and they were calling me and texting me to try and hang out. People were excited to see me. It was great. People's parents new I had gone to Europe. They asked me about it, and sincerely seemed happy to see me. It was great. You are so overwhelmed with just catching up with everything. I've been home for going on 36 hours, and I have been overwhelmed with the amount of things I've done already catching up with friends. I've had too much to do, and I won't be caught up for awhile. Trying to see too many friends at
once, try to tell stories, and answer multiple questions at once.

There was one thing that I missed in Europe, and that was Goldstar. My first meal back was with my extended family at Goldstar and I spent so much time telling stories, and answering people's questions, that by the time I looked down at my food I had eaten 2/3rds of my meal without realizing it or having the single thought of enjoying it or tasting it. You feel like you are short sticking people. You feel like you are squeezing them into your oh so important daily planner. I hugged my friends when I came home. I don't hug my friends. I was excited to see my family, and I'm not a family person. I was excited to argue with my friends over stupid shit. I was excited to give my friends stupid gifts I had got them from the EU. It was quite overwhelming. All of today and yesterday has blended together, and I have a feeling the next few days will.

People say you go backpacking through Europe to "find yourself", and get a worldly perspective. The worldly perspective aspect is true, you get a completely different view on everything in the world compared to you, and in relation to you, your culture, your country, and your life-style, and somebody can tell you until you are blue in the face about how different or how similar it is, but they will never understand until they are over there. As for the "finding yourself", I don't find that to be entirely accurate. You are out of your daily routine for so long you start to see it from an outside perspective. You realize what you like about your home self, and you realize what you don't. You find things you want to do, and at least for me, things I wanted to change.

It's still sinking in what I just finished doing. 35 days across the great European world. It will be months before I realize how much this will effect my life. It was worth every penny.