On Being Back.

I know that I'm publishing this before I actually finish my posts about the last few weekends I enjoyed in Wellington. But I can't help it. The "coming home" reactions are so unique.

The travels will be detailed at a later time. But the emotions need to be written about while they're fresh, or they get lost.

I arrived home at roughly 4 am on Sunday morning. I slept for four hours (after not sleeping more than one or two on the flights home), and woke up feeling like death. Somehow, whenever I return from an international trip, I have a miserable cough, sore throat, and one eyeball that is red, oozing, and swollen. All in all, the first thing that my family and Jesse got to see was a wheezing, hacking pirate who lost her voice somewhere over the Pacific.

Less than thirty six hours later, I moved back into my room on campus. I had not had time to pack properly, and so am now living out of a laundry basket of the clothes that I washed from my suitcases from New Zealand. I have one bowl, two spoons, two water bottles, oatmeal, a half gallon of milk, and some breakfast bars in my cupboard. Training starts at nine in the morning, and goes until nine or ten at night every day for about the next two weeks. Let me assure you that I am not complaining - I love being an RA. I am just stating the facts.

Being back on campus again so soon after New Zealand makes it feel like it never happened. It's like I left campus yesterday, had a dream, woke up, and picked up right where I left off. I find myself resenting it all, stewing over the fact that my summer in New Zealand is suddenly over.

I felt like a ghost there, and now I feel like a ghost here. Just kind of mixed up, I suppose. Unsure of where I belong. Unsure of where to go from here, of how to utilize the recent past in the immediate future.