O.E.... Y?

So what's the deal with travel?

I don't think it's bad or wrong or anything. In fact I'm about to embark in a overseas sojourn with my husband around Europe for two months! (after traveling with my choir for 1 month) But why do we do it? I mean, I know the Eiffel Tower exists, but if I'm anywhere in the vicinity I find directions, go there and look it. Why? It's not that I didn't believe all the other people who have already seen it. I've seen photos, I've heard stories- yet I will go there. It is a fair bet to say that Jay and I will go to visit the Eiffel Tower when we are in Paris. How odd. I don't imagine it will bring any new and exciting revelations into our lives. It won't change the way we see the world. But we will go there.

Oh how strange we human creatures are!

Is it just me or is it weird to leave all you know, those we love and the communities to which we belong to see other places and stuff. Are we peeking into someone else's reality to avoid our own? Or is that just a guise to meet different people and see if we might be happier elsewhere? or to find out if we're at all similar or very different? or to glean information, learn things from them that we don't know?

And the weirdest thing is I feel the most "kiwi" when I'm away from here. I feel somehow proud of our distant speck of dirt in the Antipodes, happy in the knowledge that far-off, richly blessed Aotearoa is the place I call home.