Tomorrow I head back across the pond to spend 2 out of the 3 weeks of our winter break at home. Home. I feel as though I’ve been away forever, and yet for no time at all. It’s strange how the time here seems to speed up and creep along at the same time. Perhaps Florence is actually a part of some strange time-warp that I failed to inform myself of before coming here…
As I pack up for my visit home, and my house-mate readies herself to leave Florence for good (with hopes of returning someday, of course) dinner conversations have been focused on talk of home: Are we excited to see our families? Do we have any plans for when we get there? And of course…my host mom’s favorite question: Won’t going home make it harder to come back? She is convinced that it’s a bad idea for me to break up my year away and visit home. I think if I were here for a year in which Christmas wasn’t included (ie. January – November…something along those lines) then I would agree. However, being the enthusiastic lover-of-Christmas that I am, I cannot even imagine not being home, in Bradford, with my family around Christmas. And it’s not just because I’m thousands of miles away from home – I get this feeling at Smith as well. As soon as December 1st hits, I long for home. I’ve tried explaining the Bradford tradition of watching the annual pageant in a freezing cold church while inhaling kerosene fumes for an hour, burning your tongue on scalding hot hot-chocolate in the adjacent schoolhouse, and then spending hours upon hours talking with/drinking with neighbors who are as close – if not closer – than family, but she remains unconvinced that this is actually something to look forward to. I guess to outsiders it could seem a little strange, but I couldn’t imagine Christmas without it.
So do I think it will be hard to come back? Maybe. But I think it would be harder not to leave…
On another note, I have been hounding everyone I know back home for news of snow. So far I’ve been disappointed with the responses, but I’m still hopeful for a white Christmas. Then, after all my wishing and hoping for snow at home (I’d totally ruled out any snow here, as my host sister informed me last week that “it just never happens.”), Florence provided me with a lovely little going away surprise: SNOW!!!! That beautiful, white, fluffy stuff. I got so excited I ran down to tell my host mom, who just laughed at me and called me crazy.
Better crazy than snowless, eh, eh?
Music for Today: Home by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
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