Home sweet home!

So I got home for nine days over Christmas. It had it's ups and downs but I am glad I was there. Christmas was spent with the family while the rest of the time was taken up visiting numerous friends in Galway and Limerick.

There was a definite paradoxical element to being at home. Nothing is quite the same as it was, but nothing has changed either. My family still fight about turkey on Christmas Day, it's very cold and most people my age have either gone back to college or are on the dole. There are, as far as I can see, no opportunities for recent graduates. Ireland was nice to visit, but it is a depressing place to be at the minute. We seem to have lost our optimism, our sense that even though everything is a bit crap now it will all get better soon... or at least some day. My motivated, pro-active friends are mostly considering immigration. My less motivated, less pro-active friends are mostly smoking weed.

Given that situation, I guess I should be glad to be here in the UAE. But I'm not enjoying being back in Ruwais; almost five months behind me and six months ahead I'm fighting to stay positive. I have a good lifestyle here; I like my job; the weather is nice and I can afford to buy nice things for myself and go on fairly regular holidays. None of these things are to be underestimated, but I do feel quite cut off from 'real life' here. Things are moving on without me (-how dare they?!) but I feel like even though Australia and New Zealand are much further from home, I'd feel more connected there. More alive!

My evenings here are spent with a selection of less than ten people, and lovely though they truly are, I can't help but want a wider social circle. College is really the only place where you meet a massive amount of people from varied backgrounds in one environment, and I miss that, but Ruwais is the other extreme.

Most people came out here with someone, a friend or a boyfriend, and I can't help but feel that I should have too. One of the beautiful things about being at home was being around people I can truly be myself with. You know who you are.

I don't want to go home, but I don't want to be here either.