A Distant Memory

Is been almost 2 weeks since I returned home. Since I boarded my last plane and finally unpacked my backpack. I slept in my own bed, showered in my own bathroom and had a home cooked meal. It’s been 7 days of getting a SIM card, seeing long lost friends, organising my memories into a scrap book and being smothered in my parents love.
It’s strange now looking back, it already feels like this distant memory, that I have to keep reminding myself really did happen. You lose touch with home when you travel, but when you get home you lose touch with traveling. It’s the small things that I noticed at first. Always having the fridge full and I could take anything ( no labels saying keep out!), or how quiet it is at night when there aren’t 5 other people in your room. How I can leave my toiletries in the shower and no one will steal them. But those only lasted a couple of days. It really is incredible how quickly these things become the new normal.
Now my trip to the supermarket was something else. Firstly, when we walked in my friend picked up a scanner, I was very confused, they scanned items as they put them into the trolley! Then when they went to pay they just touched their phone on the pad. THEIR PHONE! I seriously felt like I’d come back to some futuristic time. I was still paying with cash everywhere!
But even that becomes normal eventually. It definitely took a few days, but it seems like everyone does it and perhaps, soon, so will I. But it has me worried. If all that can change in the general world, has the teaching world changed so much too?
I’m excited for my new job to start in 2 weeks. I have so many ideas and I can’t wait to be teaching again, but a small part of me is worried I won’t remember what to do or ill say something I shouldn’t, almost like being an NQT again! And another not quite as small part of me worries that I'll succumb to the stress of the job again (I think my mum’s is worried with me on that one – hence the smothering). There is only one way to settle my nerves, however, and that is just to jump straight back into it.
So I’m going to enjoy my last week of freedom while eagerly anticipating my new job and reminiscing about the trip that definitely did happen!