Jennys missing home...

Wow, ive almost been gone for a full month again. Leaving home for me is fairly hard, although I love the adventure of being on my own and seeing the world, I am very close to my family and not used to being away from them for such a long period of time. When I have internet connection it’s a lot better cause I can phone them, chat them, or email them, either way I can get an update on what is going on in our world back home. But lately Ive had very little access to the internet and it has made me a touch homesick. I want to phone Chris and hear how the kids are, or talk to Tiffany about what is going on in her life, I want to send emails to reassure my parents that life is beautiful here, and I want to see my freakin dog. And more than anything I want some food from home, preferably my Moms home cooking. The excitement of Thai food lasted all of one week before I realized carbs and fried foods for every meal really isn’t all that appealing…at all. India held a lot more culture shock than Thailand but for some reason Im having a bit of a tough time adjusting, in a couple weeks ill be fine but today, right now, I am homesick.

In one of the books I was reading this trip it was talking a lot about seasons and I realized by the time I get home I will have been traveling for eight months and missed two full seasons, summer and fall (my two favorite). Sometimes I find myself on the beach daydreaming about what life will be like when I get home, how I will decorate my apartment and what kind of work I will get into this time. Anyway, home (wherever I make it) is on my mind, better yet, family is.

With that being said, traveling is on my heart and I am so excited for all of the places I will be going to visit. We finally have a bit more of a solid plan as it looks like traveling through north Thailand then heading into Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia will be the next part of this trip. If I fall in love with one of those countries I may even stay and try to find work or a place to volunteer. I have nothing tying me down to one place or another here, no deadline for when I need to leave a country, and no goal of where I want to end up; thankfully that leaves me able to choose as I go along and I am really enjoying that freedom.

The other day we were traveling 160km and it took us eight hours, by the end of the bus ride I was going crazy. Its those kind of things that throw me off and make me think of home, its just so easy to say “at home I would have been here seven hours ago with food in my belly, air-conditioning on, and a freaking bathroom break along the way”. Anyway, as I was rambling on in my mind I decided to finish the book that my aunt gave me (Let your life speak by Parker J. Palmer) and this was a quote I stumbled upon which reminded me I am indeed exactly where I need to be at this point in my life.

“From autumns profligate seedings to the great spring giveaway, nature teaches a steady lesson: if we want to save our lives, we cannot cling to them but must spend them with abandon. When we are obsessed with bottom lines and productivity, with efficiency of time and motion, with the rational relation of means and ends, with projecting reasonable goals and making a beeline toward them, it seems unlikely that we will ever know the fullness of spring in our lives. “