Category: Travel

Complicated.

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It’s day 21 of my 28 day holiday in Canada and the US. It has been an absolute blast.
Right now we are on our way north to meet with a friend from Missouri who is driving to a small town in Illinois to meet us there. I’m looking forward to seeing her again after several years. Even so, my day is still flavoured with more sadness than I care for.

I love some of the places we have left behind but it runs much deeper and stronger than that.
I miss the very special people I have left behind. I am missing them terribly, to the point where the tears won’t stop.
I guess part of keeping a schedule is that you do have to move on and keep going, but I don’t want to.

I want to go back and spend more time. I want to drink coffee together, talk, hug, share meals, see places, and to show them how much I love and value them. I want to hold hands and hug and touch faces and talk and listen. We just didn’t have enough time together.
I don’t want to say goodbye. I don’t want to be gone.

Sometimes parting really is more sorrow than sweetness, and I don’t think I can ever be quite the same again. As much as I love Australia, it won’t ever fully be home now, because it’s true: home is where the heart is, and I have a very powerful sense of having left several large chunks of mine behind.

Complicated, eh?

Just one sleep to go.

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One sleep. Just one sleep. That’s all.
The countdown started at 187. 
This time tomorrow I will be doing final checks and preparations before I get on the plane and fly away.
This trip has been four years in the dreaming, then hoping, then planning, then organising.
It’s so close – I can almost taste it. 

I’m going to the US and then to Canada.
I’m going to hug people that I have never met, but speak with every day.
I’m going to meet family that I’ve never met before.
I’m going to see places and animals that I’ve only ever dreamed I’d see.
I’m going to spend four weeks on the other side of the world.

And yet it still doesn’t really seem real, because I’m sitting at my desk like I do every other night.
I’ve spent the day at school. I went to the staff meeting, then came home, graded essays and planned lessons.
The washing machine is still going.
My dog is sleeping beside me.

Life seems remarkably normal tonight for someone who is going to experience the beginning of the trip of a lifetime tomorrow.