Nostalgia

It's sort of surreal lookng back on the days when I first moved back here. I remember looking around and being practically over-whelmed by how physically different everything was. It was so different in fact that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that people live in this country all thier lives and to them this was completely normal.

The crazy thing is that now, to me, this is somewhat normal. At the very least it isn't strange anymore. I've gotten used to wide streets and houses that are placed far apart. I've grown used to the hills (though my parents have informed me that this is flat compared to other places in the US). When I go into the suburbs and I can see the sky without looking almost straight up (because the buildings pilled high and in tight proximity) a sense of agoraphobia doesn't wash over me. And once I'm outside the suburbs I no longer feel saddened when I see trees rather than fields.

Hell, I'm used to seeing mailboxes!

Nevertheless, there is this one road that I can take to my house which I love to go on for two reasons: 1) few stoplights; 2) (and this is the main reason) at one point the trees thin and disappear for about a quarter of a mile. Suddenly on either side of me are fields which eventually give way to trees a hundred meters from the road. There is a dirt road which goes of the asphalt and squeezes between two of these fields. Then it disappears into the woods. That one quarter mile road looks so much like Poland that when I first traveled I felt my heart squeeze. Even now I look at those fields and pretend I'm in Poland. Then I can't help but feel sad when I soon find myself in anther typical American housing development.

I find that even though I've grown used to these once-strange surroundings...I'm still far more at home someplace else....