where am I?

For the first time in two years, I have that feeling again. That WhereamI? feeling. The Last time I felt it was at Harvard where the elusiveness of the name and the high standard of the entire experience left me a bit dumbstruck on a daily basis. I would walk by Widener library with its monumental white columns and think, wait wait wait, I am at Harvard. Harvard. After about six months and being asked by directions by tourists (a signpost meaning I must belong if I actually know where to point people). Year two was just like returning home, familiarity lived once before.

I am constantly amazed at the fact that I will just pick up and go, decide to travel, work abroad, study in the states, without really considering where it may put me emotionally, away from family. Some people find this assertiveness admirable, and I too think it something special. At the same time, however, I find myself on the other side of the Atlantic for an extended period of time, starting in at a new place in life and learning once again. I don't know how to say little words, I don't know where to buy certain things, the supermarket is an experience, I marvel at what people simply call the everyday. I find myself transplanted, surrounded by nothing familiar. I've got emails from friends and phonecalls from mom, but being so far away, in a new routine feels incredibly new, incredibly strange. perhaps when my parents come for their italian sojourn, I'll feel like the world holds together a little more.

By no means am I depressed or in the dumps, just reflective, reevaluating life in this world, experiencing the sheer number of people that live on this planet. I continue to be me, I continue to do yoga, but at the same time I am swimming in Italian, surrounded by people more bronzed than what I am used to. The feeling has kicked in these last two days that I am living a bit of a dream. The feeling is no different than the WhereamI? feeling I get when I am at school, but add a whole new world to it and it feels even stranger. Up at 730, shower, breakfast, yellowline, greenline, work, home, sleep. It's only when you stop to think about it, that you realize life to be quite strange: the sensation of being awake, the touch of hot water, the rhythm of the daily commute. When everything feels so strange you ache for something familiar and hold on to a memory of home or childhood. I just remember my steadfast friend Henderson the teddybear, wearing his Canadian flag sweater, cheering me on from home. Someone who will never leave me, most likely because he doesn't have a brain or a heart and can't really move. When life moves so fast, you need those steady constants to remind you that you existed and by default still exist.