Next Year?

I just paid my landlady the last of the rent I owed her. She asked me if I would like to rent the house again next year. She said I was a quiet tenant and a clean tenant; much better than the run of the mill (aka British) tourists that normally come through here. I said I’d probably not be coming back next year.

Then I got to thinking, why am I not coming back? The obvious answer is, of course, that I’m going to university. It’s damned hard to be in two places at once and in this case university takes precedence.

But that’s not all. I don’t feel I should come back. Though I loved my time here, I don’t feel it is the right course of action to return. The Palolem chapter is finished and I don’t think that a repetition of the place will in anyway create a repetition of the time. What’s more, I don’t believe the time should be repeated. This experience should be unique; individual and un-diluted. I believe I’ll be doing all I’ve learned here a disservice if I return.

That doesn’t mean I’m done moving around, it just means that I will have to move somewhere else next; somewhere new, somewhere undiscovered (by me, anyway). I think the next trip (which will probably be two years away at least) will either take me to South America or to Africa.

I think right now I’d prefer South America. I’ve met a lot of South Americans over the last few years and I have to say, they are absolutely fabulous people; insane, dangerous, disturbed, loud lunatics with a propensity for the dramatic and a nose for trouble, in other words brilliant.

Maybe when I move next I’ll be going somewhere where I will be working, rather than only hanging. Then I’d move from the category of traveller to expat. A little worrying, as most of the expats meet are wankers who can only ever bitch, while they get opportunities thrown in their laps abroad that they could have only dreamed about at home. Sometimes we become what we despise; but I hope all of you will be kind enough to execute me in some absolutely dreadful way if I do turn into one of those unappreciative, overweight, sweaty, beer guzzling monsters. I’m rather particular to putting me on top of a bus, with only a length of barbwire to hang onto and then going down some really windy mountain road at high speed. That will teach me.

So, to return to the topic at hand, I don’t think I’ll be back in Palolem next year, but I’ll directly admit that this is probably the worst time for me to decide anything like that, seeing as I’m just at the end of this stay. Seven and a half years ago I thought I was done with school, this year I’m going back. Now I think I’m done with Palolem.

I’m sure you get the picture.