September 15, 2015, Haider and I landed in Reykjavik around 7 am with massive suitcases, bleary eyes and anxious but excited minds. It was the first day of our 11 months overseas. And now, one year later, I’m back where I started in central Pennsylvania.

Yesterday, I found myself at the Newark Liberty International Airport, a year to the day after we boarded our evening flight to Iceland and left the US behind. But this time it wasn’t my adventure. I was dropping off a good friend who is making aliyah, moving to Israel and becoming a citizen. She went to Israel just a few weeks before I went to Spain and spent all of last year teaching English there just like us. But she decided to make the change permanent and embrace Israel as her lifelong new home. I, on the other hand, just seem to be growing ever more transient, even though at the moment I’m back in the town where I’ve spent most of my life.

Seeing my friend off on the same date and in the same place that I began my big adventure was an emotional experience. We spent most of the three-hour drive to Newark talking about the anxieties she felt about her flight, her immigration process, and the daunting task of creating a new life in a different country. I felt a string of flashbacks, remembering how I kept checking the GPS on that same drive, feeling my stomach twisting into tighter knots as we got closer and closer to the airport and the reality of my crazy new life. But yesterday, as we pulled up to the terminal and unloaded Jess’s suitcases, I felt nothing but jealousy for everything that lay ahead of her.

So where are we now? Haider’s living in Philadelphia again and working a sensible job, where he can pick up some valuable work experience and save money. I’m not quite ready to let go of my “in the wind” status; I’m currently freelance writing and waitressing while planning a trip out to California and a few excursions around the West Coast.

Longer term, we are still planning to teach English in Asia next year. We were aiming to move to South Korea in spring of 2017, but learned about an interesting opportunity in Hong Kong in the fall. Before we can apply we need to complete our TEFLs (certifications to Teach English as a Foreign Language, that is), which will keep us busy over the next few months.

Returning home after a long time away is a tricky thing, and I think everyone must experience it differently. Before we left, I was nervously reading articles about “reverse culture shock,” certain that home could never feel quite like home again.

In truth, it’s been incredible how easily I slid right back into my old life. As soon as the jet lag wore off, it already seemed like I’d never left. I remarked to my friends that it felt like I’d gone to sleep the night before at home in Philadelphia, had a really wild dream about traveling around Europe, and then woke up back at home and went about my life.

While it makes me a bit sad that the many incredible experiences we had abroad now feel so distant and intangible, seeing how easy it’s been to return and re-enter my normal life makes me so much less afraid of leaving again. Looking back to one year ago, I realize that one of my biggest fears was that nothing would be the same again, that I’d be closing a door that couldn’t ever quite be opened again.

But instead, I’ve just enriched the life I already had. My connections with the people and places I loved remain unchanged. I’m the same person I’ve always been, I’ve just discovered some new facets inside myself along with new corners of the world around me. I’ve learned that travel is a simultaneous process of exploration deeper inward and further outward, but it doesn’t change who you are at heart.

As well as growth, the last year has been a process of identity change. For the last few months, I’ve find myself babbling like an idiot in response to basic small-talk niceties, the questions that used to be so easy to answer. What do I do? Well, I was was a writer, and I still write except not really as a job, and I was teaching English, but I’m not really a teacher, and I’m not teaching now, although I will be again sometime in the future. Where am I from? Philly, I guess, even though I don’t actually live there anymore, I’m just there all the time. I’m living in Harrisburg, but it’s not exactly my house, and I don’t know for sure how long I’ll be here, or where I’m going next.

During the month of July, which I spent backpacking around Sicily by myself, I’d get pangs of homesickness and wouldn’t even be able to identify whether it was America or Spain I was missing. I already can’t choose what feels more like home between two continents — how will it be when I add a third? Maybe a fourth, someday?

For now, I’m content to be in this place of uncertainty. Despite the instability of my current life and the big unanswerable question that is my future, at this moment I find myself in the place where I feel the most grounded — sitting on my mom’s porch, listening to the birds and the crickets and the gentle tinkling of her wind chimes. I love being out here when it thunderstorms, listening to the sound of the rain as I sit safe and dry under the roof.

My life here is so cozy — a refreshing change especially after living out of a backpack and fending for myself for a month — that I didn’t even begin to really miss Spain until recently. For several weeks, my mind was fully occupied with just soaking in the comforts of home. Then some of my friends who renewed for a second (or third or fourth) year started returning to Spain and each photo that popped up on my Facebook feed would trigger a little pang of envy. All those little tiny flashes of wanderlust started quietly piling up, to climax with that trip to the Newark airport; now my restlessness has returned in full force.

It’s okay, though. The next adventure is just around the corner.

And as for this blog? I haven’t gotten to write about a fraction of the things we did in Europe, so I still have PLENTY of posts to crank out! Stay tuned for more about:

A girls’ trip to Poland with two long-lost besties

Day hiking through the mountains surrounding Barcelona

A gorgeous, wine-soaked weekend in Porto

Returning to Lisbon and visiting the mysterious Quinta da Regaleira

Dancing ourselves clean at the Primavera Sound music festival in Barcelona

A last hurrah weekend in Valencia, Spain

Hiking Montserrat, a Catalunyan mountain home to a medieval monastery

Backpacking alone for a month in Sicily (Cara)

Volunteering at a refugee camp in Athens (Haider)