Welcome Back to a Foreign Land

It's my first Saturday night since classes started and I'm in my room in a sweatshirt and slippers, too lazy to reach three feet to turn on my heater, but hungry for warmth all the same.

It's strange to think I've been home for nearly two months--one-fifth of my time abroad--and I still catch myself saying "last semester" in reference to my last semester here. It's jarring, the way Melbourne doesn't seem to exist anymore. It's exactly what I was afraid of. I find myself aching for ways to hold on to a year that has long since retreated. My walls are plastered with pictures, the rainbow lorikeets have found their way into my poetry. Still, though, despite my efforts to reconcile my past with my present, I can't help but feel that rediscovering my American attachments is somehow disconnecting me from Australia.

I had prepared myself for changes when I returned home. On my flight into L.A. I envisioned new structural developments sprouting up throughout my neighborhood. For the amount of mental preparation I gave myself, I don't think I would have been surprised if the city of Seattle had covered the Space Needle in a coat of neon green paint. What I hadn't counted on, though, was the fact that the biggest changes wouldn't take place at home--in fact, I'm still shocked at how unaltered everything seems to be here--but within me. I knew things would change while I was gone, I just didn't know things would change because I was gone.

Christmas came and went, wonderful as always. The cold was a welcomed departure from the heat of Melbourne's December. It's amazing how quickly life settles itself, how the once familiar, made unfamiliar, can become familiar again so quickly.

And we just keep on moving.