Home
Coming home from Canada has left me with a very strange mix of emotions. One the one hand I’m excited to see all the people and places I missed so much when I was away that made me homesick and on the other I’m homesick for all the people and places I left behind. Coming home also made me realise how much it isn’t the big obvious things that even make you homesick. I missed all the familiar things that make up the city of Edinburgh, the cobbled streets, the familiar shops, my favourite café, the castle and a million other landmarks even if those landmarks like they so often are only landmarks in my mind. I missed ‘landmarks’ like my favourite place to sit in the gardens, the building sight wall with my favourite graffiti, that rut in the pavement I always trip over! It is not really these things that made me realise I was home it was much simpler things, and the strange little dirt path that leads nowhere behind my flat. However the excitement and relief of finally being home really rushed back to me when I ate a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch, which are impossible to find in Canada along with a huge list of other foods like Marmite, polo mints and Tesco brand tortilla chips. This in turn made me realise that there are similar things I will miss about Canada like Silk brand Soy Milk and Mike ’n’ Ike’s jelly beans. Now I’ll miss other things about Canada not only the food like Zaphod’s Bar- the best place for music and Tila Tequila- the worst! I’ll miss having the canal to run along (or ice-skate along depending on the season), I’ll miss that it actually snows in the winter and that there seams to be a protest outside the parliament every single day of the year. Most of all I’ll miss all the people I met and friends I made but I suppose as a trade off I get to see everyone I left behind last September. Coming home is also strange because everything is not quite how it looked a year ago. It’s like someone had taken Edinburgh and shifted it ever so slightly, road-works have moved and buildings have popped up, shops have closed and new ones have opened. All this means that I find myself walking along, suddenly noticing something new and then finding myself a little confused because it’s as if everyone else in Edinburgh just jumped forwards a year and left me behind.
Coming home had also brought with it a bit of a reality check. In allot of ways being on exchange in Canada is like living in a dream or just being on holiday. Your requirements for the year are to pass your courses, you can’t get a job on your VISA so you have no work commitments, and you meet a million new people from all over the world and travel around as much as you possibly can. It is fantastic exciting and exhilarating. Now that I’m home I realise the need for a job is much greater than before, I have a dissertation topic to pick and then write and a degree to finish but in a way its just the next stage of the crazy adventure that is life and it will bring its own exciting challenges and I can’t wait.
