Good morning

I'm sitting in this borrowed room, curtains drawn over the view overlooking the lake and gardens, still blinking the blur from my eyes. It's almost ten o'clock, but my body protests that it's really before seven. My mouth full of coffee and chocolate milk, ears full of Regina Spektor--this moment is hard to beat.

As hot water washed over my skin this morning, I thought about how there wasn't a shortage here, how I could take as long as I liked and only feel marginally guilty instead of being harped at by my father because of the bills. And it's gloriously beautiful here, all shades of blue and green. It reminds me of Washington last summer.

But as beautiful as it is, it's still not home. Not yet. No dry chaparral, golden and crisp beneath my sandal-clad feet; no stiflingly hot temperatures; no spontaneous visits to friends' houses. Oh, and the ocean. I don't miss her, not yet, but I will.

I feel a world away from the country I grew up in, separated by an ocean of land-water and all those millions of people who live there.