MISSING HOME

I've been doing pretty well lately as far as home-sickness goes, but every once in a while I really really miss my family, friends and life in Vancouver. It sort of comes over me in a big wave and tends to strike when I'm least expecting it. Perhaps it's when everything else is going so well in my life that I have time to feel sorry for myself!

While the absence of my family and Vancouver friends is a constant hum in the back of my mind, I've really made an effort to fall in love with Cambridge and forget - just a little bit - how spectacular the west coast of Canada is. For the most part it's working, especially now that the weather is hospitable and I can spend long hours out in the sun. But the nice weather also brings reminders of all the outdoors-y activities I could do back on the coast - riding, hiking, camping, swimming in the ocean, going out on Joan and Alan's boat just to get away from it all - that aren't available (or least easily or cheaply accessible) here. I think the biggest thing is that in Canada I was able to GET AWAY FROM MY FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS, even if only for a few hours at a time. England is just so cramped and lacking in millions of acres of wild space that I often end up feeling claustrophobic. (I have been told that I could find space devoid of people in northern Scotland, but that I would be eaten to death by millions of mosquitoes before I had time to notice the lack of humans...)

Now: switching from how crammed-in by Brits I feel to how much I would love to be crammed in by certain other individuals. Family and Vancouver friends: why are you so wonderful??!! Do you realize that because you are such amazing people, it makes me miss you terribly? My life would be so much simpler if my friends and family were louts (ha ha). Has this blog convinced you that Cambridge is a nice enough place to move en masse? And the people we've met in Cambridge are such a great group themselves that I'm sure you'd all get along famously. (The trouble being, of course, is that we will eventually leave this town as well, and have TWO groups of people whom we miss dearly).