Moving Back Home

So, I've decided to move back home. London's great, but it's not home, and I'm getting tired of that. I've been here almost a year, and I've gotten a lot more used to it, and learned my way around, but it's tough living in a place that just isn't quite... normal, what you're used to.

And it's tough being away from family - not only because I miss them, but because they're there and I'm here, I don't have a support circle here. Sure, I phone them a lot, but it's not the same; this really hit me when I got sick over New Year. Having no-one around to make me lunch, or go stock up on medicine, or just be around to help me feel better really sucked. I've proved (if only to myself) that I can cope on my own, I can be independent, I can handle it - but while I can do it all on my own, I'd just rather not any more :-)

And I miss biltong, and the sea, and the mountains, and the sunny weather :-) I know it won't be all sun and sand - it's not like when I went back on holiday, and it's not as though I'm going back in time to when I worked at ATC. It'll be a new life (again), and I'll have to go to interviews (aargh!) to find a job, and find a flat and organise a phone line and internet access and change all my addresses and basically re-do all the stuff I did when I moved over here, but in reverse. But it'll be worth it, because I'll be home.

It will be tough leaving London. Each place has it's own good points and bad points, as I've mentioned before, and I could add a million more things to that list. In the end, it comes down to where your heart is, and mine's in Cape Town. It might be different if I had tons of friends here - it wouldn't stop me missing familiar things, or my family, but it would help to have some support. And it's always more fun doing things if you have people to do them with - to point out all the cool sites, that kind of thing. But then again, having a bunch of friends might just have made it more difficult to leave.

There's a lot that I thought I would do that I haven't done, like travelling around Europe. But when you're working full time, weekends become about cleaning the house, and resting up for the next week of work, and shopping, and you just don't have the time or energy to go be a tourist. But I have a week or so of leave left, which I'll take at the end of February - and while I don't really feel like travelling around Europe, I do plan to do walking tours of Oxford and the Cotswolds, a day trip to Edinburgh (I know, it's pretty far to travel for a couple of hours! But there's a tour package for it which includes a sight-seeing bus trip and entry to Edinburgh castle, which should cover all the bits that I want to see), and a trip to Bath. My mom's coming over, since she hasn't been to visit me yet and won't get a chance now that I'm moving home, and we're going to spend two weeks packing up (aargh, gotta decide what to sell, what to ship home, and what to get rid of, and how to get rid of it), and doing touristy stuff that I haven't done yet, like Madame Toussauds and going out to Pooh Country. So all that should be fun.

And then, it'll finally be time to go home :-)