The End

It's hard to believe that I'm home.

I turned the key in my door, went to my room, took a shower, checked my mails, turned on my mobile-- everything is the same. It smells the same, tastes the same, but it doesn't feel the same. recognize how pretentious this might all sound-- I've only been gone a month, it's not like I've journeyed for years-- but bear with me. I keep remembering the line from a song that I can't remember the title of, but the line in the chorus goes "homesick, because I no longer know where home is". In a way, that's how I feel. This, my house, Seattle, will always be my home. It's where I'm from, where my friends are, where I know the streets and the people and the restaurants.

But on this trip, I've perpetually had that feeling this trip you get when you cross several time zones, where you realize that when you go to bed, someone else is going to work. The sudden elucidation that the world never stops moving, only you do. My experiences aren't predicated on predestination, they're based on how dramatically I put myself out there. Likewise, wherever I call home is less where I'm from, but where I decide to set down. It might be on a rooftop in Beirut. It might be a monastery in Eastern Syria. It might be an apartment in central Tel Aviv. But home is just a concept like any other.
Now it's time to get back into shape and ready for University. Pack my stuff up again (this time in something a little bigger than a 40 liter backpack) and call somewhere else home. No more traveling until I can scrape together some more money (which, considering the state of my finances might not be for a while). But, for everyone who read and commented from home, thank you for making sure I was okay, and sharing in the experiences I had. To any of those reading who I had those experiences with, thank you for sharing yourself with me. You're indelibly a part of me, even if we just traveled for a day. Hopefully I'll see you all again, somewhere halfway around the world.