Life from Scratch

It's been 4 years since I have lived in England. In fact, I am returning in the very same week that I left in the summer of '04. Even though of course I've been visiting sporadically in the meantime, returning now takes on a strange mixture of familiarity and feeling like a tourist all over again. 

I found myself standing dumbstruck before a bemused shop assistant at London Paddington station last week as I turned over the heavy and unfamiliar coins in my hand, eventually handing over what I thought was the right coin for the occasion, a huge £2 coin that hadn't crossed my hand in ages. More than once I have come close to being completely flattened due to looking the wrong way before crossing the road and now that we're in the north, it takes me an extra effort just to follow what people are saying. If you've never heard a Liverpudlian accent, its a special kind of adjustment :)

Its strange how we are suddenly having to build up life all over again from scratch. From the simplest things like crossing the road properly to finding jobs and apartments, it makes me understand how settled my life was in New York and it somewhat throws me off balance to understand that I have stopped traveling - that this isn't another stop on our journey, but rather the destination for now. We're staying with good friends in Liverpool while we get our act together which definitely softens the blow, but after well over 3 months of living out of a backpack, I'm more ready than ever for a place to call home.