Orono

This morning started with breakfast and studying at a small coffee shop downtown, then a little bit of wandering around the shops, picking up a few things, being very independent and grown-up. Oh, and for those of you wondering about my sanity: I found a piano and was able to play for a minute. I think that'll hold me over until I get home next week. : )

At dinner a few of us were talking about going home. It'll be the same as it was before we left, we all know that. But it'll be a little different now that we've seen somewhere else. I for one am realizing (yet again) that the world is so much bigger than I imagine when all I do at home is go back and forth between home in a small town and school in a small town. There are people all over the world doing things and going places and meeting other people who are doing things and going places. If you think about it, life on this side of the world isn't much different from the side that I come from. Sure, there are little things: the roads are different and the money is a little more complicated and there are words like "kerfuffle." But yesterday I saw a mom eating breakfast with her daughter while another woman scarfed down a scone in her hurry to get to church on time. People go to the grocery store, pay their bills, do their jobs, read books on benches, wonder and dream and think about life. People all over are just trying to keep it together, raise their families, come out on top. I'm a long way from home on a very large globe, but the world isn't really as big as I think it is.

Also at dinner I was watching us sitting around and talking. There were four of the normal six who cook together at the dorm and enjoy a few hours in between classes and doing homework, and usually we'll sit around and talk for most of it. We're all part of the same school doing mostly the same thing over here, but while I'm learning about this new culture over here, I'm also getting to know the people that I get to travel with. Who are in their turn not all that different from me either. We have our dreams, our fears, our wonderings, our questions, our things that we get excited over; and each one of us is dying to share if we can just get a word in. Because we're international, our cell phones don't work, and the internet here is wireless so our computers stay mostly at our desks hooked up to the wall by a very short cable. Which means that we're actually looking at each other while we're talking. Not once did someone snort at something they'd read on their phones; at no point did one of us say, "Hang on, let me respond to so-and-so." We were sitting around a small table, in the here and now, talking and laughing about the thing we were talking about right then.

And it was awesome.

How often do I really get the chance to do that? I've already talked to a couple friends about getting together for a meal when I get home (if you're one of them, just know that I'm REALLY excited about it :D ), but those moments are usually few and far between. We have a no-cell-phones-at-the-table rule at my house, but when I eat dinner with my friends at school, when I'm riding in the car with my mom, when I'm standing around the kitchen with my brother - when do I really put down my phone, completely disconnect from CyberSpace, and focus on the flesh-and-blood people in front of me for a change? And when I finally do, why don't I recognize the awesome-ness of it and do it even more? Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm a fifteen-year-old boy who sits in the back seat and grunts in answer to questions while I'm texting somebody (.....although I do get pretty into Candy Crush when I play it). But there are so many times when I'm going somewhere with my mom and I'll be checking my Twitter while she's driving. Or I'll have my phone on the table ready to answer any texts or calls right away (not that I'm getting any, but it's there just in case I ever do). I get so focused on not missing out on what's happening online that I completely ignore the person who's sitting right in front of me.

I've been thinking a lot about what I'll take away from this trip when I head back home, and, though it's not English or literature-related, I think that disconnect will be a major thing: put down the phone and listen to somebody alive for a while.

And also, don't settle for cheap cereal. Because you'll prolly wind up with some Fiber Flakes pish and that's just no fun at all.