Return of The Mack

Yes, yes, The Greg is back! Hmm...referring to myself in the third person must be an American thing I picked up haha.

Damn it's been one heck of a trip! Coming back to Melb is surreal, like it was just one part of my life that existed in my head. This USA trip was the longest I had been away from home, Melbourne and even Australia. I've still got this feeling like travelling around the US is the plan for the rest of my life. I met this guy on the plane from NY to LA and he had gone over to Pittsburgh for a year for an exchange from Perth. He had almost totally lost his Aussie accent, it was so weird! I guess the social aspect of human culture really is influential.

Even getting driven home from the airport through true Melburnian 'burbs like Coburg and Darebin feels as if I've just attained PR status and seeing all things Aussie through the eyes of an immigrant.

It was so funny though, I got home and went to the loo and heard the tradies next door cementing the walls of the new house talking like true Aussie blokes. Nothing like some raving on about the missus peppered with words beginning with F and C to kick the American right out of you.

But yeah, America was so crazy. I guess that was forseeable since we trekked along with heaps of luggage and saw things that you'd never see in Australia.

I really want to recap all parts of our trip but it'd just take far too long. It was amazing though, that there really are people in different parts of the world that live in a way so different to us. And it's not like we went to Africa or the Far East, this was North America, they speak English there! (Well for the most part. NYC was quite a melting pot of people from all sorts of places.)

Unfortunately Anna has the digital camera so I'll have to concede to showing you guys photos later. I've been in Melbourne for about 4 hours now but it feels like a lifetime. I really don't know what to do. For the last almost 2 months of my life it's been "Where to today?" or "How are we getting there?" and "Did we forget anything?"

On the home front, been catching up on everyone's blogs. Read a few and noticed that people have discontinued their blogs! As much as I was surprised, I kind of wasn't. Not only is it a new year (oh by the way, Happy New Year everyone!) and people are looking to throw out the old and bring in the new, I myself contemplated to stop blogging. Like both Drew and Chops said, blogging is cathartic, and so I thought to myself why do I need to blog and show everyone else what I'm going through when I can just write this all in my little journal? I unconvincingly reasoned that sometimes it's good as a starting point for discussion, I know many times when I met up with whoever and said something like "Oh hey by the way, what you blogged about is sooo true!" In this day and age I think it's hard to catch up with everyone and have D&Ms with each and every single friend. I guess blogging keeps everyone up to date with where you are kinda thing.

Yeah, I know what you guys are thinking now: this post has no direction. Hehe I blame it on the headache I have! Coming from an average temp of like 5 degrees to a balmy 27 degree day does some weird things to you. Not to mention about 26 straight hours of flying/waiting in airport lounges.

Anyway I'm going to do a series of posts, one dedicated to each city we went to. They'll mostly outline the highlights and little observations about each city. That's good for me I think, it'll make up for the lack of blogging action in the last month or so.

I'd better go and continue unpacking. Nice to be home!