I've been back in the UK for 17 days now and I've been back in my hometown for exactly 2 weeks; I've already started to notice that I'm passing through phases, which I'm going to call the 'returning home' phases. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only traveller who has experienced this, but to avoid posting something that has already been posted a million times...for example, those posts that say 'what no one tells you about returning home from travelling': I've seen about five of them. I'm going to outline the phases I've gone through so far.
After being away from everything British, I've got to say I've found a new appreciation for, well, apparently everything.
For starters, when I was flying into London I flew over the English countryside, and I swear I've never been more excited to see fields in my life... I even took a photo. Then I was so happy to hear nothing but English accents, I got over-excited over a Christmas coffee at Costa (salted caramel if anyone wants to know) at the airport, I stared at my English currency for about five minutes, I took a photo of the first double decker bus I saw, and then I was happy because I saw a black cab, I just couldn't get over how ridiculously British everything seemed. I have to say, drinking tea and eating biscuits has never felt so good.
I got the coach from London to Durham (we all know how much I love a coach ride) and we stopped in Leeds for a break. The first thing I did was run to Greggs and buy a corned beef pasty and a mince pie. Then when I got to my mam's house we went straight out to the local fish and chip shop and bought my first lot of fish and chips, complete with scratchings (by the way this was the day after the Greggs - I'm not that ridiculous! Or am I?), and then the following day I had my first roast dinner. It's no surprise I'm already putting the weight back on that I lost when I was in Asia!
After the initial excitement of seeing everyone subsides, you actually feel like you've never been away, or at least it feels like it was ages ago. You just slip right back into normal life because everyone's the same and everything's the same. It's true that you see your home through a different set of eyes, but I don't think it's true that you come back a completely different person... maybe it is for some people, but for me that's not the case.
This is the phase that I currently find myself in, even though I've only been back two weeks. The second day I was here I threw myself into the task of painting my room, which took up my time for about 4 days, so then I threw myself into the task of applying for jobs, to no avail so far. Until I get a job I can't really go out and do anything so the boredom is reaching an all-time high... I'm so used to doing things every day and visiting new places that the boredom is actually really getting to me already, which doesn't bode well! At least the silver lining of all this free time means that I can start to learn another language, which was one of the first things on my to-do list once I got back home. As much as I want to learn Spanish as I believe it's one of the better languages to know, I already sort of know German so I'm going to brush up on that ... there's my purpose for the time being!
So if there's anyone out there that wants to hire a marketing assistant, please hire me ... at least to save me from my boredom. It could get so bad that I end up learning to knit or something.
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