What I've decided about homesickness

People keep asking me if I'm experiencing it. Homesickness, that is. And I keep saying no, not really, I don't feel homesick. I'm happier than I've been in months. I'm busier, but more peaceful. I feel a stronger sense of purpose than I've known for a long time. I'm making friends, I'm getting settled, I'm beginning to make plans for the future, outside of being an au pair. I'm growing in love for my host family while maintaining healthy relationships with people in Georgia. I feel utterly confirmed. I feel at home.

Then it turns to evening and then dusk and I realize the people I want to share my day with are miles and miles away and hours and hours different and I think, maybe I am a little homesick. Not in the traditional sense, not in the sense that I desperately want to be in Milledgeville or am depressed without my family and friends, but in the sense that I yearn for the things that make a place a home. Because in learning to make Australia home, I miss the things that had built it for me back in the States.

I miss having people to text and meet up with in five minutes. I miss having the opportunity to see my family. I miss living in close enough proximity to others that time spent together could as easily be spontaneous as planned. I miss having a cat, having an apartment of my own, being known. And I've come to realize that these things I miss are not things that are particular to Milledgeville but things that I will cultivate here as well, in time.

So yes, I guess I'm a little homesick. But I know it will pass, as do all seasons. And in its passing, a new home will be built up and strengthened and fortified with the same courage it took me to come here.

In other news, being an au pair is an incredible thing. Apparently, I'm bad at blogging about it. More on that later, maybe.

The road ahead is a good one.
[from Lane Cove National Park]

Overwhelming.

I met these women at Hillsong recently. They're both from Georgia.
They help make this place more home-y, and I'm grateful.