Homeward bound

It's amazing, when you think about it, that you can travel half way around the world in 24 hours.  You can go from being in a 32*Celcius, 90% humidity locale, to a 10*Celcius, 10% humidity locale in the space of a single day.  Let me tell you, it's not as easy as it sounds, though.

Jet lag is the pits.  When your body is used to peeing at 2pm and your 2 pm is now 2am, it's very disrupting to your sleep patterns.  So it took us about 5 days of waking up at 2 am and not being able to get back to sleep before our bodies clued in that we weren't going to be napping all day! But we are through that now, and happily going crazy in North America.

 

Now we're back in Canada.  It's a strange thing to realize that all of the things that used to be normal to you (like cold) are now very weird.  After nearly a month of being in North America, it's still a shock to be able to turn on the tap and not only get hot water, but not be afraid that I will get amebiasis when I rinse my toothbrush.  Covered shoes are hard when I've been wearing sandals for almost 2 years.  Static cling is almost unheard of in places where it's almost 100% humidity all the time...but that's not Canada.  Layers were something on a cake in Asia, but now I need to wear 4 wooly ones any time I get out of bed (and sometimes in bed).  Sometimes I actually open my mouth while showering.  And I even will occasionally leave the house without a backpack...though not very often, I must admit. 

 

North America is a very big place.  We traveled by train or bus sometimes in SEA, but mostly we walked everywhere.  Here, we DRIVE everywhere, and it's not short distances, either.  Everything is so spread out...and there are hardly any people!  There are places in India where even where there is agriculture, there are a few people in sight.  We drove from Toronto to Ottawa yesterday, and there are vast tracts of land where there is just...nobody.  It gives you a whole new perspective when Asian tourists go ga-ga over the vistas and the trees and the lakes...there are very few places over there where you can look out without humanity being in evidence. 

 

I feel a bit...wobbly.  My emotions are a bit...fragile.  I'm really happy to be home, to be heading back up to the Yukon, to be seeing all of the friends and family that I've missed.  But sometimes I just feel like crying, too.  Is this culture shock?  What is this?  I'm a bit sad to seeing the travel come to an end, but I'm very ready to nest for awhile.  What am I not telling myself? 

 

It's hard to get my head together.  That's why I haven't blogged.  Usually I'm composing in my head, but there is so much to take in and so many people to talk to and listen to...I just haven't had the brain space. 

 

But, just so that you know:

We're almost home.

ACDB