I am not homesick.

Just yesterday, I almost for got I was in the middle of teaching a class, as I sat up on the window sill of my classroom with my face pressed against the windows looking down into the streets of Banciao as some sort of parade passed by. There was the snare-drum pop of fireworks everywhere. Little, blue, flat-bed trucks were carting musicians around as they beat on drums and played violins. The music was so foreign to me, though I’ve heard it often here.

My students all climbed up on the window sill with me, but they weren’t as fascinated by the parade. They were all looking at me, smiling at how funny it was that I could find this to be anything but normal.

Aside from everyday surprises like that, I also get to go to one of the best universities in the world to study one of the most interesting and unique languages in the world. I never thought I would be doing this.

Most importantly, when I go home, I am greeted by a wonderful family who has welcomed me into their home and taken every step to make sure I feel as comfortable and happy as humanly possible. I don’t even speak their language, but they’ve gone out of their way to make me feel at home and to help me learn.

So, I’m not homesick.

Yet, at night when I’m trying to go to fall asleep, or in quiet moments when I’m riding on the bus, I think about how easy things are back home. I think about friends that I haven’t seen but for one or two months in the last two, three, four years. I still keep in contact with them, but it’s not the same as having a couple pitchers of beer on trivia night at the Village Tavern.

And of course, there’s my poor family who, for always encouraging their son to pursue what he was interested in, has only gotten a prodigal son in return.

Sometimes I imagine walking through the streets of my city at night next to the ocean when there are no people, no cars. Just the ocean. And the moment I start to wonder if my nostalgia is homesickness, I realize that in that very situation, I would probably be dreaming of being somewhere else, and that’s what’s so sick about all of this.

After a certain amount of time being away, I start dream of times when things were normal, or easy. Let’s face it, at home, things are easy, relatively. Sure, your problems are still problems, but they can be resolved in your native tongue and with proper respect to your cultural expectations.

Have you ever tried to resolve an internet tech support problem in French? It is both linguistically and culturally difficult (and tech support when I lived in France was not free!).

Right at that moment, when I start to fantasize about those moments of ease, a part of me cringes — the part of me that believes that ease is the opposite of interesting, the anti-adventure. This sort of simplicity is the mother of routine and normality, which is hell to me. I don’t want things to ever be normal, though some days, like today, I may want to sit down and talk about nothing with my friends over a couple of beers, or sit down with my parents for dinner.

I’d imagine this is a fairly common sentiment among ex-pats — the simultaneous desire and aversion to going home. It’s maddening sometimes, wanting so bad to be home, but knowing if you were, you’d want to be somewhere else.

Well, for now, I can’t wait to go home for Christmas.