There's No Place Like the Parents' House

I don't have much to write about, other than my completely ludicrous sleep schedule. I seem to be on rotation, six hours of sleep, six hours of waking, six hours of sleep... etc., etc. How I wish I were kidding. I must be driving my poor family nuts. I'm certainly driving myself nuts. All I seem to be able to do is sleep, watch TV, read, eat, sleep, watch TV, read, eat. And I'm not talking reading deep things, I'm talking like I can barely pick up the Nick Hornby book I bought for the plane ride.

I am so, so glad to be home. In terms of seeing my family, of course, and in terms of no longer needing to worry about my personal safety sort of 24/7. And not needing to be worried about my stuff all the time, and being able to take a shower and do laundry, and all the practical things like that, things that take up so much head space when you're traveling. Not to mention the sightseeing and adjusting to new cultures and whatnot.

I do, however, have enough travel anecdotes to last me about two years' worth of parties and meeting new people and dinner get togethers and so forth. You know, arriving in Madrid for the first time with a high fever, arriving in Paris for the first time with no luggage, arriving in Slovakia for the first time completely unexpectedly... those are my top three bad expletive stories (as in, I use a lot of expletives in a really negative way). I'm not even sure what my top three good expletive stories (as in, I use a lot of expletives in a really good way) would be -- there are so many. Getting to see a real achaeological dig just outside Rome, where teams were in the process of excavating plant holders and suchlike, the way I felt after going to a concentration camp tour (well, that was more of a mixed expletive story... I actually completely unironically and un-self-critically started mapping out how little human contact I could get away with for the rest of my life), what it looks like inside a pyramid, seeing Socrates's very own marketplace ... I probably have at least one for every country I've seen.

Okay, right, nostalgia is boring. Corner me at a cocktail party sometime; I tell these much better than I write them.