BootsnAll Travel Community

In 3.5 weeks we go home.

I have to say I'm looking forward to going, but I'm worried too.

We're not going back to our old city we're moving to a new one, which keeps it at least a little bit exciting.

But how did people find it?

We have to find a place (we have friends to stay with for the first week), get jobs, get back on with UK life.

Were you glad to go home?

How long did it take you to settle back in?

How did you find friends were with you?

Dharker,

I'm so surprised so many people have viewed and not responded to your question! It is a very good one, and one that all of us must have at one point in time.

Truth is, the experience will be different for everyone. You said "we" so I imagine that you will have a wonderful ability to share your re-adjustment experiences with someone who is going through the same thing, which is not somthing to slough off. As anyone that is a part of this forum will know, having people who GET IT, who UNDERSTAND...its the reason we are all a part of this website. So to have someone by your side who gets it and understands I think will be of the greatest consolation.

But, as per your question as to personal experiences. I found "coming home" (i went home to a different place from whence I left, yet the original place I had come from) was a simultaneous sensation of excitement and lonlieness. I did feel like those around me would never understand the loss I felt from coming back to a world of routine again. How quickly you lose that sense of adventure, and excitement, and time, and fall into a routine of having a cell phone again, and your own television and computer and personal space. And yet...after a time, I found that I began to incorporate those very things into my life HERE. By not getting television, by taking the bus instead of a car, etc. I'm sure many people on this site have read "Vagabonding" by Rolf Potts and he has a great chapter on coming home. The idea that vagabonding is a state of mind, that starts at home and ends at home. Its the way you percieve the world and go about existing in your life. Bring home with you that which you have discovered on the road, and you will never feel too far away from the truth of yourself you learned on your journey.

I found the adjustment difficult in a very deep way and yet the day to day life...you slip right back into.

Just be aware, be conscious, be open, come back here often to vent, and know that who you were then, who you are now, you are one in the same...you are the same person you were on the road and bringing that home is an experience that makes life EVERYWHERE an adventrue, even your own back yard, and it also inspires others to embrace that adventurousness too.

Have FUN going home!

erin

This topic has been discussed a bunch of times; a search would help bring it up. Perhaps that is why the views but not responses.

It probably would have taken me longer to settle back in, but real life and the need for a job slapped me pretty quickly.

Erin's response says it all.

I traveled with my husband and even though we had each other to share our experiences with, our reactions to returning home were very different. He was ready to return and pick life up where we left it, whereas my whole sense of being was turned upside down.

I felt much like Erin - one moment in a state of nirvana and full of inner peace and the next minute feelings of complete loneliness. I ended up taking what I learned (like that I really "need" so little to live happily) and readjusted my life at home to be more simple and fulfilling than it would have been had I not traveled. My husband ended up back at his same company and was happy with that.

Everyone is different. Something you have that I didnt is this board. I wish I was member back then, it would have helped me adjust much quicker. Good luck with your return home.