carteki wrote:I remember returning home after my first 3 year trip overseas. I thought it was amazing that even though I'd been away from home for 3 years when I returned it was as if I'd been away for a week. My friends were still there, in the same jobs, with the same routine as when I left. Given the traumatic events that led to my returning home I found it very comforting to "slip right back into things".
This time, it is different. I have now been away from home for 18 months and recently my friends back home have been saying that I've become selfish because I no longer agree with everthing they say, or (even worse) openly disagree with them. I can see that the experience of living in Asia has changed me, while they have remained the same. I ocasionally get fustrated by their "sameness", but by and large let them be. Why can they not afford me the same?
Because most people can't handle change all that well and like the others have mentioned - travel (actually more specifically overseas living/life) broadens the mind.
I remember what it was like when I first returned from Australia after staying there for 1.5 years. My friends - both at church and outside - found my opinions very different. I was more outspoken politically, socially and so forth, and I wasn't embarrassed to have an opinion. I found the laidback attitude of my church peers to be revolting (when the issue of politics crops up, most of them are ignorant or worse, can't be bothered to do/think anything). I even had one friend get pissed at me because I didn't agree with her whole "we ought to tell gays that their lifestyle is sinful and point them to the right direction". O.o
I became more distant from my friends in terms of the lifestyle I chose to lead - not a party animal, a homebody who likes a quiet life doing things like knitting and such, and that my conversations revolve around other things apart from just men, shopping and beauty.
Needless to say, I lost a couple of friends along the way but hey, I made new ones as well. Life is like that - people come and go and as someone once told me, it is a change that everyone goes through.