Tuesday, August 12, 2008

There's no place like home

Well, here I am, back in good old Pennsylvania. Finally found myself a computer and a little bit of down time to get this blog started up. This page is new, but I'll treat it as a continuation of my Cambodia blog. (Now that I'm back in the States, MCC will take that one down. Maybe I'll see if I can transfer those posts over here.) I liked writing while I was gone, and even though I'm no longer half a world away, I decided to keep up the occasional writings, for anyone who's interested. I'll give you some photos, random stories, life updates, reflections, expressions of what I feel...even though, as Nikki so wisely says, none of it is equal. I know.

Since I last wrote from Phnom Penh, I feel like I've wandered back through several lifetimes. Reentry days with fellow MCC volunteers, coming back to my parents' house, reconnecting with relatives, catching up with high school friends, traveling to Goshen, watching friends get married. Looks like the world kept spinning while I was gone, and now it keeps throwing me off-balance.

So many times during the past year, I thought about what it would be like to be home. In a place where people understood me, where I understood them, where I could simply be myself. Now I'm here, in my house, but home is more elusive than that. On one hand, it feels strangely normal, like I can just melt back into place. It's true; there's no place like home. It's beautiful to be back with the people I love, back where I belong. And on the other, I know I can never quite belong anywhere. Phnom Penh, Telford, Goshen, Denver... and no place is like home.

There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home...

Click the heels of my ruby-red slippers three times, and I might just disappear.