So it's finished. We've packed up all our things, said goodbye to this incredible country we've come to love, and headed back home. It's something I've been looking forward to for nearly a year now, but also something sad. We've had homesickness and job uncertainty as well as amazing adventures and wonderful friends, and somehow it seems nearly impossible to be back to our old lives in Canada.
We've talked several times together while we've been here about how our life here seems so totally separate from our life back home. It feels vaguely dreamlike in its dissimilarity. This has been really apparent whenever people come to visit us; crossing the divide between our Canadian life and our Thai life, but is becoming a glaring reality now that we're coming to the end of our time here. Will it all seem real once we're back home? Will home be everything I've been missing and longing for for? What will we miss about Thailand? Will we ever get the chance to come back?
Sometimes I feel like I'm crazy to want to leave this place; there is so much here that I love. But, there are a lot of things I love and miss about Canada too. Before I fall asleep I imagine myself going on a walk in the woods back home; with the crunchy earthy smell of the fall leaves all around. When I'm feeling homesick I think about sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning while enjoying a good cup of coffee. I always knew that I was kind of a homebody; that I am a person who needs to be close to my friends and family to feel really content; but this has come sharply into focus through the homesickness I've felt here in Thailand. I now know that although life sometimes doesn't take you in the direction you expect, I really hope that I can convince it to let me be near my community of people.
On the other hand; we'll miss a lot of things about Thailand. Shane will certainly miss the beaches and the surfing. I will miss the amazing food, the excitement of my students when I walk in the classroom, and how incredibly Thai everything and everybody is (sometimes amusing, sometimes exasperating but always opening my eyes).
So we're both happy and sad to be leaving and coming back home. We're so glad that we've been able to share our experience through this blog, and I hope that you have all enjoyed reading it. Who knows, maybe we'll have to start a "Shane and Hannah's Adventures in Canada" to keep up with our exploits back home? Overall, this has definitely been an experience that has helped us to grow as individuals and as a couple and I wouldn't trade it for anything. As we close this chapter in our lives we'll just hope that the next one is just as full of amazing experiences as this one was. "The straight way's short, but the long way's pretty."
No comments:
Post a Comment