Yawns, Britain and Old Friends

Within 10 hours I was whisked away from the sunlight and potholes of Tbilisi and I cannot even quite tell you or describe the transformation of location. I am back in beautiful Britain, which to my surprise I think I have grown a quiet fondess for.

After a tearful goodbye and many promises of returns, gifts and solemn toasts I parted, laden down as usual with the 35kilo hand luggage that means I never have to pay excess weight on the aeroplane. A short movie, a brief nap and a glass or two of wine (curtosy of British Airways) later I am suddenly in a home from home, surrounded by the familiar faces of my dear Bridgimina and her beautiful beautiful family. It has been catch up and coffees all afternoon and now late into the night. And through all the murkiness and difficulties of interpretation and understanding of the last 2 months my chats to her have cut through it all like a knife. There is clarity in the circles that our conversations flow through and there is a certainty and stability in sitting here on her bed, looking around to see objects of familiarity. There is the map of our first breath enraptured trip round South America when we were 18, the oh so well known sleeping bag that has followed her unfailingly throughout the ups and downs of university, summer holidays and journieings, the bright orange patchwork quilt I sit on now that we bargained so hard for in Guatemala and that matches the red quilt I gave to my parents as a wedding anniversary present three years ago, the photos, the shining bicycle reflector with our college momento, the masks, the bags overflowing with secrets and treasures, even the plants that have been transported from Bridget's other home in Liverpool and that are now grown taller. It is a room full of a whole host of stories and memories. It is a room crammed to bursting of life and secrets and momentos, the tierdness, exhaustion, beauty of travelling and living and learning. It makes me feel good to think that I am weaved into so many parts of it. But it also reminds me of how temporary home is. Home is weaved and bound up into this little room in Bridget's parents house. My original 'home' is not in the same city, not even in the same country. But the arbitrariness of home rests not in a location, but in those things and people and memories that are precious to you. This room is a testament to that, and in the shared memories and delights of this place is my home.

I am surrounded with people I love and amongst reminders of who I am and it is deeply satisfying to not be striving to understand a new culture, or a new language or to meet and know new people. It is just good to keep on building upon what has come before, and not to be pushing and breaking new grounds constantly.

I look back at this year, bright shimmering, increidble year that it has been, 10 weeks in Guatemala, 10 weeks in California, a week in Texas, a week in San Francisco, 10 weeks in Washington DC, 2 weeks travelling across America by train, 10 weeks in California, two weeks at the G8, Scotland and the UK and 10 weeks in Georgia. Now, finally I am back to Britain for the final stretch of university. I love travelling, I love seeing and absorbing new sights and sounds and smells, but it is a wondrous thing to remember what it feels like not to be constantly absorbing and growing and changing in that dramatic, almost violent manner of living in a new country and culture. It is a feeling I think I had almost forgotten. The change of sitting in one place and reflecting and contemplating and allowing those deep fanastic scars of new experiences to heal and reveal their profound effects. I have no doubt I will never stop travelling. I have no doubt that when I leave for London tomorrow, for Kent later in the week, back to Cardiff after that, then back to London and up to Scotland and university I will enjoy the movement and the excitment of the new and the changes in each of those places, but it is different to return somewhere. It is vitally and essentially a different form of growth. In the same way when I keep my promises to those I left behind in Georgia and return next year it will be a new form of growth. Maybe the next nine months in St Andrews, writing my dissertation, observing how the world has or hasn't changed, digesting what has happened to me and why it all was so important won't inspire such long blog entries. Maybe the photos won't be as interesting, the contemplations will be more narrowly defined, the characters calmer and more grounded, and the blogs less exciting, but I have no doubt that they will be just as important in the overall scheme of things.

So, this morning when I flew out of the world of Tbilisi I also flew out of the world I have inhabited up to this blog point, and within hours I am returned back to where I once began almost a year and a half ago, to this little green island on the edge of Europe, with its rain and sarcasm.