Home Sweet Home

"Home".  

I've kind of thought about what home really is over the past few months.  There's the home where we live.  We go there every night after work or school and we make it our own.  Our hometowns (it has the word right in it) or where we grew up will always be "home".  When we go back to visit, I think a lot of us naturally say we're going home for a while. 

Washington will always be home for me.  I just snuck back for a quick visit last week, and it was

Mt. St. Helens on the approach to Sea-Tac

natural to say I was going home for a while.  I've lived a lot of places, but the Evergreen State is the only one I call home... with one small exception.  It's been very easy to transition into calling Wisconsin home.  Funny story with that actually.  When I came out here in May for my interview, as we were all making our way off the plane, the flight attendant was doing the standard, "buh-bye, buy-bye now".  As I walked passed, he looked right at me and said, "welcome home."  It took me aback, especially since I was wearing an Oregon State University Dairy Club sweatshirt, and absolutely nothing that affiliated me with Wisconsin whatsoever.  I shrugged it off at the time.

It's rare that I settle somewhere and it all feel right so fast.  I never did feel at home in Ohio, Brattlerboro grew on me, but not instantly (it is still one of my favorite places though), it even took some time to settle into Pullman.  Friends and family back home may not like this, but Madison, Wisconsin, the Midwest instantly felt like home.  


A good friend asked me last week if now that I was back home, if I truly missed it and didn't want to come back to Wisconsin.  The follow up to that was an inquiry into how long I thought I saw myself in this new job, and if maybe I'd head back to Washington when my time was up at Expo. 

The road to my adorable little neighborhood

I can't say how long I'll be with Expo.  I've been here five months... that's not long enough to decide if you're going to become a lifer, but I can say I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon.  Now, as far as where I'll end up when and if the time comes to change, I have absolutely no clue.  I can say this though, although it was absolutely fantastic to go home for a bit, and yes, I miss my friends every single day, I can't say there was an uncontrollable urge to stay... or go back.  

The Midwest truly does feel like home now.  I have always sorta felt like a Midwestern farm kid stuck in a Western farm kid's body.  Things out here are just different, and the people are too.  They're welcoming and friendly.  Seriously... how many of you have ever started a new job and had a coworker, whom you have never met, offer to let you live with them for as long as you need to until you find a place??  

I kind of feel like I've rambled a bit with this post, but here's the long and short of it, I'm home.  And I'm happy to be here.