Every time I come home from abroad it feels like no time has passed. My parents are always there waiting for me at arrivals. After a brief, glad but unemotional reunion, we head towards the parking lot. Before we can make it to the car, some kind of bickering will break out between the three of us. I will sit in the front seat of the car, my Dad in the driver’s and my Mom in the back. The radio will be tuned to 680 News, an all-news AM radio station my Dad keeps on to avoid Toronto’s traffic jams. I stare out the window at the highway and stare at the open space as we drive from back home. Once we are home and my bags are laying in a pile inside the house, I sit around and wonder what to do. There’s this unwritten rule that you don’t make any plans on the day you return from a trip. You feel like you should be really tired or decompressing. So I pace our house in the suburbs, like most days when I’m living there, and try to pass time.

It’s only in the following days and weeks do I get a sense of how long I’ve been gone. In time I find stores I’m accustomed to visiting are gone, whole buildings stand fully-formed and new appliances are found around the house. When I catch up with friends and on gossip I realize how far their lives have moved too. After the initial reunions, it’s even more of a game to try and figure out what to do with my time.

The wait is over and I’m flying out tonight to Paris. From there, I’ll take a train out to Strasbourg where I’ll stay for a few days figuring out where I’m going to live. The long and short of my living situation is I’m not any closer to making a decision than when I found out I would be teaching in Sélestat. I went from definitely commuting, to maybe I should live in a small town, to relief/cold feet when the teacher at my school told me I could live in an apartment on campus of another high school, to scouring French housing websites several times a day to find myself some roommates, or colocs. Here I am the day I am about to leave perhaps even more muddled in my opinion than when I began.

Now that I’m on my third big trip away from home, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve established a routine. I can’t go without feeling intense anxiety right before leaving. It’s exactly how I feel when I’m at an amusement park and faced with roller coasters. I run my mouth and try to cajole my friends who don’t want to ride it to change their minds. As the line dwindles down and we’re the next group to be let on, I think “Oh shit, why did I sign myself up for this?” Despite all the good times I’ve had in another country (and on roller coasters) before, I can’t help but quiver a little bit.

posted by vicky at 9:02 pm under Pre-departure, Toronto
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