Friday, August 13, 2004
Fly Away Home
I may not be able to truly satiate my desire to travel to exotic destinations right now, but I can at least go home. So I did. I ran away to North Carolina. I have been here for two days so far, and it has been wonderful. A vacation to recover from my summer vacation. I suppose it is true that one can never go home again in exactly the same way as it was when one was a child, but right now, I don't want that. It is, in fact, more comforting to me that I cannot come back and feel the same as I used to, because I do not want to feel that I am reverting back to something that was before or regressing in some way. I am enjoying being the me that I am now around the people who have known me the best and the longest.
My mommy, who loves me, took yesterday off of work to hang out with me. We had a late breakfast at Bruegger's, and then went to a place where my parents and I can spend hours upon hours of time: a bookstore. I wasn't going to spend any money, but, well, that obviously was not meant to happen. I picked up a book about the history of American English and another about the development of Spanglish. Fun, fun, fun! I'm building up quite the backlog of books that I am looking forward to reading, after I finish the book I've been reading ever since I went to China and then had no time to read. We followed that up by going to World Market and being girly about home decor items.
I had lunch with my dad today. First, though, we helped another guy from UUFR move the sound system cabinet into the new sanctuary. My dad and John have been in charge of the sound system for years now, John being a professional sound designer who used to work in theater in NY and my dad being an ex-electrical engineer, so I had a lot of fun listening to them commiserate and explain to me all the things the architects did wrong, from a sound design point of view, in that beautiful new room. Then my dad took me to one of the good restaurants in the fun area of town near his office, on the way stopping to point out to me the way to identify a GE train engine on the freight train that was parked on the bridge over the street we were on. Good, geeky times.
My brother loves his present from China, and has declared me a good sister. I got him a fake North Face jacket in Shangyiang Market in Shanghai, which was super cheap and apparently indistinguishable from the real thing. It even fits him, and the color was pronounced very satisfactory.
All in all, this has been an excellent trip home. It was a good decision to run away for a while, I think. If I have to have returning pains, this is a good place to do it.
I may not be able to truly satiate my desire to travel to exotic destinations right now, but I can at least go home. So I did. I ran away to North Carolina. I have been here for two days so far, and it has been wonderful. A vacation to recover from my summer vacation. I suppose it is true that one can never go home again in exactly the same way as it was when one was a child, but right now, I don't want that. It is, in fact, more comforting to me that I cannot come back and feel the same as I used to, because I do not want to feel that I am reverting back to something that was before or regressing in some way. I am enjoying being the me that I am now around the people who have known me the best and the longest.
My mommy, who loves me, took yesterday off of work to hang out with me. We had a late breakfast at Bruegger's, and then went to a place where my parents and I can spend hours upon hours of time: a bookstore. I wasn't going to spend any money, but, well, that obviously was not meant to happen. I picked up a book about the history of American English and another about the development of Spanglish. Fun, fun, fun! I'm building up quite the backlog of books that I am looking forward to reading, after I finish the book I've been reading ever since I went to China and then had no time to read. We followed that up by going to World Market and being girly about home decor items.
I had lunch with my dad today. First, though, we helped another guy from UUFR move the sound system cabinet into the new sanctuary. My dad and John have been in charge of the sound system for years now, John being a professional sound designer who used to work in theater in NY and my dad being an ex-electrical engineer, so I had a lot of fun listening to them commiserate and explain to me all the things the architects did wrong, from a sound design point of view, in that beautiful new room. Then my dad took me to one of the good restaurants in the fun area of town near his office, on the way stopping to point out to me the way to identify a GE train engine on the freight train that was parked on the bridge over the street we were on. Good, geeky times.
My brother loves his present from China, and has declared me a good sister. I got him a fake North Face jacket in Shangyiang Market in Shanghai, which was super cheap and apparently indistinguishable from the real thing. It even fits him, and the color was pronounced very satisfactory.
All in all, this has been an excellent trip home. It was a good decision to run away for a while, I think. If I have to have returning pains, this is a good place to do it.
