We are back home for about a week before we head off to the last frontier. It's very surreal being home. It's good to be home, but very strange how quickly you fall back into old routines. It doesn't feel like two months have passed and yet everything around us shows that the world kept on without us, which we knew it would. While traveling the real world became this abstract thing that you're aware continues to exist. It's hard to divide your mind into two places at once though. It reminded me of when I left home for college. For a long time I kept thinking about things in terms of how they would have been if I were back home. Summer was supposed to be like this and I would normally be doing that. Eventually though you let go of where you were and accept where you are. Now we're back and this massive trip is behind us without any real fanfare. That's how it goes though. These large moments in our lives quickly go from something you're experiencing to a thing you did before you can really grasp the concept that it's become the past.
Strangely enough being home and knowing next week we're going to be off again makes this feel a bit like a really long layover in our own town. We've unpacked and started doing every day things like stressing out about the house or what type of sandwich to make that compliments the beer we bought. The jet lag is still playing tricks on us though even though we managed to go to bed at what would be considered a normal time locally. Our first day back we were up at 4AM because even though we had been going for 30 hours without sleep, our bodies were like 'three hours of sleep is plenty, time to get moving'. We found out that the grocery store is very nice at 6:02 AM on a Wednesday to do grocery shopping. We also found out that you can't buy beer before 7AM. It's something I never really thought about, but now that I know it makes total sense. You have to stop enabling people at some point. Still it's not our fault that our brains and bellies were operating 17 hours in the future.
While we're home we hope to see who we can before we scamper off again. We really need to get better at being able to answer the question of 'what was your favorite?' It's hard to answer because of how long the trip was. It's a perfectly fair question though because when someone goes on vacation you ask them what they liked about it. For us though we essentially lived in South East Asia so it's a bit like asking someone what was their favorite moment from a two month period. Thankfully in addition to this travel log I've decided to log all the highlights from each area. It's interesting how quickly things you do start to fade. Hopefully with a memory appendix I'll be able to map my way back to the various points in the trip and come up with a more meaningful answer to the question.
Up next: The Midnight Sun!
