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bite your thumb If anything the journal has made me more aware of time and how easily I can manipulate it. I mean we're only three months into the year and I am constantly trying to decide where I hope to be six months from now. Yet at the same time today was one of those days that seemed to last forever and nothing happened. Now that I read that one more time it doesn't sound as clear as I thought it did. Maybe it comes down to the fact that some days I feel the need to be as inhumanly active as possible. Suddenly things have to be done. Goals have to be met. Then the next day all that I want to do is simply be me. Most of today fell into the latter category as I spent more than an hour lying on the couch watching travel programs. Europe beckons me and if I could I'd go back this year. It doesn't matter that I'll be in Australia in two months. I still want to go back to Europe. Being able to experience both within the same year would be great, but probably won't happen. I think that I got a good mix of the tourist side of Europe and the every day version while I was there last summer. I'm not saying that I felt as though I belonged there, but it wasn't as though it was one giant amusement park either. Some of the most memorable moments were when I did every day things such as shopping for food in the grocery stores. It sounds so common yet it took on a whole new aspect for me. The people that I saw in those stores weren't there to impress me or create some kind of cultural statement, they were just being themselves. Using the mass transit system in foreign countries is also something that really stayed with me. More than once I found myself completely surrounded by people who probably didn't consider English their primary language. This did and didn't bother me. I was isolated, but not lost. People could hold quiet conversations and it didn't distract me. Maybe they were talking about me and maybe they weren't. I mean I was the foreigner after all. I was the one out of place.
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