A familiar place in a foreign land...aka back home

I'm sure this topic is the kind of thing most real bloggers devote a decent amount of time to and purge the depth of their souls to come up with new and brilliant insights. But seeing as how I (and most likely we) don't consider ourselves real bloggers (whatever one takes that to mean), I'll try and keep this brief.

P.S. This picture is the first one that came up when I typed 'home' into google image search. It's from the FDA 'know the drugs in your home' page... funny.

I haven't felt so American in a long time. We just (well I say just but it was a few days ago... I'm not overly motivated at present) got back from a short holiday in Spain with friends and upon return we both felt... well... just a little weird.

Read the rest...
It was interesting in some ways to take the holiday, to leave this odd little island where we have carved out an existence amongst foreigners (though technically we are the foreigners in the situation, but regardless foreign also works to mean other or different right? Let's go with that definition, then). What was interesting wasn't so much that we left but that we left one foreign country to go to another; we did a lateral shift in our foreignness.

It really just felt like a normal vacation: we got on a plane, went somewhere interesting, had a good time and came home. It also felt quite normal (and lovely!) while we were there (as normal as a trip to Barcelona feels, I'm sure). We were with old friends from New York, eating and drinking good food, seeing the sites, and feeling all the part of the tourist... all the part of the American tourist. And then we returned 'home' (which itself still wasn't odd) and things still felt normal. But then we got off the train at Durham and this odd sentiment crept over us. The emotions and feelings that should have been there... weren't, and in their place was this sense of feeling out of place and foreign; the warm feelings of home were switched and replaced with the feeling of being other.

Maybe other ex-pats have similar experiences, maybe it's just one of those (many) things
you go through that you don't experience at home... maybe not. Maybe it was just our reaction from this individual holiday, but regardless it was weird and will sit as an odd milestone in my (and most likely our) experience abroad.