The night was humid. Really humid. Lordy, was it really possible for me to breathe this much water without drowning? And how was it possible to be warmer here than in New Zealand?

My friends didn’t seem to notice the watery air around us, and in spite of sucking down a gallon of water with every breath, the smile on my face remained broad as I chatted with them. The conversation spanned topics, continents, time. I was introduced to some of Rice’s newer students, one of whom suddenly turned to me and said, “Ninja.”

Ninja? What? We were talking about something completely diff—OOF!

The wind was knocked out of me as one of my sneakier pals crashed into me from the left, and I went reeling. Ah, I had been given a warning. But I was laughing as I teetered crazily for a moment before regaining my balance. Just like old times.

I was back at Rice University for a few days before Thanksgiving, and the yearning for all things Kiwi that I had expected to feel was instead replaced with a quiet happiness. Though a large number of my friends are yet scattered across the globe, enjoying their own incredible adventures, I was still surprised at how much I really had missed my friends, missed Rice. Upon my return, I hugged, laughed, talked, listened, watched, wrote, and even sat down with more gusto, more passion than I thought possible. After being around the world and back again, life just seemed so much bigger and capacious than it did before I left. The most monotonous tasks were now performed with a smile and genuine enjoyment, and I relished the weather, so much warmer and sunnier than Dunedin, though for my former home summer approached.

But then again, not everything was quite like old times. The university had undergone a few cosmetic changes while I was gone, which was a little tough to adjust to. And of course there were the innumerable new faces I saw everywhere. Also, since I was this time a visitor and not a resident on campus, I had rather limited access, which meant I had to wait patiently for someone to enter or exit before I could enter most buildings.

There was also that peculiar sense that I was slightly out-of-phase with everything. It was akin to that same feeling when one goes back to their old high school for the first time a couple of years after graduating. You see all these people whose whole world is contained within those walls, and you can’t see why they can’t see an existence beyond those bricked bounds. There’s a bit of nostalgia mixed with the thought, “Wow, was I ever really like that?”

That same smothering panic that I first experienced in Los Angeles was here, too, though thankfully less extreme. Everyone seemed to have accepted its presence, forever combating the stress and fatigue, but never quite rising above it, and I couldn’t understand why. I told a few of my friends to relax, that everything would still work out if they chilled out, but my concern was met with incredulity, disbelieving laughter, and shakes of the head.

It was at those times I felt the most as though there was a bubble surrounding me, separating me from my friends in a sense, making me feel as though I were a merely a shade, a ghost floating in and out of existence. With that buffer, I felt I was also separate from the breakneck pace that whirled around me, the pace that had suddenly become my anathema.

No…not suddenly.

The people, the brochures, the books, that enigmatic collective we call They, all told me to expect changes to have occurred during my time abroad, both at home and within. I had prepared for changes at home, but I was somewhat surprised to find just how much I had changed. After all, if I had remained here, I would be just as strung out, just as tapped out, just as burned out, and now…nothing could have been more repellent to me as that sort of existence. Even during those mad rushes to finish papers and cram for finals back at the Uni of Otago, it was all suffused with that notion that life was much too important and precious and short to freak out over something as miniscule as a few sheets of paper. So there was live jazz when I should have been studying, mountain climbing when I should have been writing, dancing when I should have been thinking. And though in the end it was my worst performance in an academic semester ever, I have no regrets. Instead, I have memories, and you know, I think it’s that sort of thing that makes our time on this earth worth experiencing. More than anything, more than souvenirs, more than stories, more than grades and pictures, being back at Rice showed me how much I want to hold on to that feeling, the one that tells me to enjoy sunrises and Godzilla and snow and ::wince:: bicycles and being cold. Of course, I’ll always be working towards a better future and better Jon, but not at the expense of the Jon that is, the future that unfolds today.

And so my ten days in Houston passed, in defense of my new creed. I lived, loved, laughed, and was as one free. I got used to things that had become strange to me, such as seeing squirrels again, and finally, I departed that place for my third home, Homehome as some call it, back to Ben Wheeler.