Following a summer of nearly internet-less existence, we are home at last, and our laptops are receiving some much-needed attention after months of sitting untouched. It seems absolutely impossible that I haven’t written since June, and equally impossible to recount everything that has happened in between. Thinking back over the summer, a slideshow of memories flicks through my mind: laundry and suitcases, airport codes, arriving in Edinburgh, castles, abbey ruins, bagpipes, the oven in the dormitory, chocolate chip cookies, highland cows, Hadrian’s Wall, Scottish thistle, good coffee, rain, old churches, towns where our ancestors once lived, people who smiled and said ‘hello.’ Of course, our dreamy Scottish summer had to come to an end, and while we were welcomed back to Klaipeda with some cool weather and a sneezy round of colds, there is something to be said for the comfort and familiarity of being in our own place. The ease of knowing where everything is in the grocery store, the blissful silence of a Sunday afternoon, drawers and hangers instead of suitcases, and the routine of daily life are things that just can’t be replaced with tourist shops and little bottles of hotel shampoo. I guess it really is true that there is ‘no place like home.’