A new life in the UK!

To all my friends back in SA: I miss you all soooo much. To all my friends here in London... it's great being here!

It's a funny feeling to be so far away from home and everything familiar, yet having so much possibilities and opportunities for a new home, a new life with new familiarities, right in front of you. All you have to do to have those opportunities is to reach out and grab them, but something in your heart is still calling home. There is something about this new life that is just to good to be true and just to far away from everything that is familiar to you.

I have never been a girl who gets homesick easily. When I was 12 years old I went on my first trip over the big waters, so far away from mommy and daddy. We were in Hungary and Vienna for three weeks, and by the second week most of the kids were crying for home. Not me. I wanted to see and do as much as I could while we were there. At the end of the trip, I was so dissapointed that we couldn't stay a while longer to do some more traveling. I'm used to being far away from home by now. I've been on a lot of trips and tours and I was never the one to call home every night, but this time is different. I don't exactly know why.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that I want to take the first flight home or that I call my parents twice a day, asking them to come and fetch me. I enjoy it here very much and I want to stay as long as possible. But there is something about the permanancy of this trip that makes me very scared and sad. Everytime I talk to someone from home on the phone I get tears in my eyes. I've only been here for a week and already the concept of home in South Africa is just 'n vague concept left in the past! I think I'm just struggling to make sense of it all. The reality of the situation is still to big for me. It's one thing to plan 'n trip for a month or so and see and do as much as you can before you have to go home. It's another thing to make a mindshift and exept that this wonderful and exciting new place IS my new home - at least for the next year. I need to stop focusing on everything I left behind and start focusing on everything that is right in front of me. For the next year (or more), my life is in the UK and I will see and do as much as I can while I'm here.