Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Oz Files, #19: You can't go home again

I've been back home for a little less than three weeks now, and have already settled back into the routine of summer: breezy skirts, fantastic summer produce at the farmers' market (tomatoes, corn, eggplants, peaches, blackberries...), and dreading the start of the school year. Surprisingly, it didn't take too long to re-adjust to this time zone, a few days at most, mostly involving an inability to stay up past 9 pm and popping out of bed at 6 am. Very uncharacteristic. What took longer was re-adjusting to looking the correct way when crossing the street. I'd gotten so used to cars driving on the right side that it actually was hard to go back to seeing the cars drive on the left, even though I've had vastly more experience with that setup. I had to keep telling myself: look left, then right. Left, then right. (Shades of JFK.) The mind is a funny thing.

And while it's true that, in a certain sense, you can go home again, it's a truism that travel makes you see things in a different way --- not just because you're looking the wrong way into oncoming traffic. I've noticed this particularly with the birds and animals here in Philadelphia. Because there were all these wonderful parrots and cockatoos and kookaburras around in Australia, I was sure that our silly little sparrows and crows would pale in comparison. Ditto the mammals: Who would trade adorable brush-tailed possums for disgusting, rubbish-eating squirrels? But not so. Sparrows are actually terrifically fun to watch as they flit around, and even squirrels can muster a bit of cuteness when they're sprawled out on the benches to avoid the heat. It's hard to just see these things when they fade into the day-to-day, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to see the world with fresh eyes.

That being said, if one of those damned squirrels falls through our ceiling again, I will have no compunctions about getting out the shotgun. :)

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