Well Said, Johann

I got to thinking today about what I might want to blog about since it's been a few days, and came up empty. It's been a pretty run-of-the-mill week, aside from a stomach flu apparently going around. I've finished my two grad school applications. Continuing to fight fires in SSF, our non-profit, that are really more of just an eternal flame. I pick Little up from school with Toro every day, do a LOT of homework with her - third grade in Spain is absolutely brutal. (On the upside, I never expected to know how to say esternocleidomastoideo in Spanish, but it's a relevant speech muscle so... thanks, elementary school science...) I do my English lessons with all my girls as often as their crazy schedules permit. Honestly, unless you're interested in hearing about Little's escapades with long vs. short vowels or Middle's ongoing battle of the adverbs, my daily life is not much to write home about.

That sorta bugged me at first. I mean, I moved to Europe for adventures and new experiences, but the reality is 95% of the time I lead a very normal life, discounting the whole bilingual element.
Then the quote I used at the top of this blog started bouncing around in my head. "Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones."

It struck me that this - this lull, this daily grind, this comfortable routine I've formed - is exactly the other half of the reason I came here. My passion for experiencing new places comes from two seemingly opposing roots:
One, my love for the discovery of the new and strange and exciting.
Two, my love for the discovery of the normal and comfortable that is always hiding underneath.

I LOVE knowing that anywhere in the world can be home. Everyone's ordinary is someone else's extraordinary. The backdrop may change, and of course you're going to have your preferences, but you can carve out a niche for yourself wherever life may take you. How incredibly liberating is that?? My favorite part of traveling - a close second only to the moment you encounter something new - is the moment that same thing becomes normal. It's the moment your comfort zone has inched outward just that much further.

It seems like a paradox, to be the same and yet to fundamentally change.
But I think I understand what he's talking about. It's a growth process, like adding rings to a tree. What was there hasn't changed, but neither is it the same.

This in turn made me think of my group of college roommates-turned-family. We're a college senior in a climbing co-op, a farmer in northern Michigan, a tour guide in Washington D.C., a restoration ecologist in Chicago, a sailor in the Caribbean, and an au pair in Spain.
But whether we are taking in the view from the top of the Washington Monument or drifting past the volcanoes of Saint Eustatius, the day-to-day of our lives still revolves around that sacred first cup of coffee in the morning (You know who you are, black sheep. Go back to your skittles and popcorn.) and the new shows we've discovered on Netflix.
There's no where you can go and no one you can be without simultaneously finding you're still simply you inside the personal orbit of your everyday existence. And it doesn't mean you're not growing.