I never expected to be so comfortable there. From the moment I walked off the plane, I felt like I had been searching for this one place my entire life without ever even knowing it. I hadn't realized that any place that wasn't my home could feel so much like my home.

I had a blast on my trip to Hawaii. We filled our days with dancing, drinking, swimming at the beach, and of course who can forget the Marines (of the male, military kind). D's expereince was much more positive than mine. She got the cute one. I got the hick from the Wisconsin backroads (go figure). Needless to say I spent the evening fighting off unwanted advances from a dirty greasemonkey who didn't even bother trying to remove said grease from under his fingernails before attempting to touch me. Granted, sometimes a little dirt can be incredibly sexy. But this guy disgusted me so thoroughly in all other aspects that it just made him look unwashed and sleazy.

As that was the only undesireable aspect of my trip, I now move on to much better details of my week in Paradise. The weather in Hawaii was beautiful, always sunny and warm, and the prices were not quite as expensive as I had thought it would be. Waikiki is full of life and every night street performers come out to hustle, I mean entertain, the crowd. The hookers in their clear shoes and scraps of cloth they call dresses walk the streets and hit on the men. There is a girl who hula hoops for hours on end (she's very good and both the men and the women seem to enjoy her.) And who could forget the silver man who only moves when you drop money into his bucket (he's no fool.)

Even though this sounds very untoward and downright awful to some, there is something so non-threatening about all of it. Everyone is so laid back and calm. No one tries to attack you for the change in your pocket, the streets are clean and people seem to take pride in their surroundings. Men go to work in Hawaiian shirts and women in flowered tops and dresses. There is nothing rushed or hectic about life on Oahu.

People have said before that going to some places feels like going home to them. I never knew what they meant until now. But I wonder that if this place I want to call my home will be so wonderful when I start to miss my family and friends here on the mainland? Does the specialness of these magical places lie only in the fact that our encounters of them are brief, or have I really and truly found my Home? And if the brevity of my experience is the sole reason for my pull toward the islands, could I really make it on my own, thousands of miles away from everyone I know? I'm not sure if I know the answers to any of this but what I can't understand is why everything feels so wrong here in Chicago, and why I feel so homesick for a place that's never been my home.