You can leave, just make sure you come back.....

I spent a week in Lisboa, which as Louise found out, in English is Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Honestly I think us Canadians need to brush up on geography a bit..... the picture below with the flower was taken at a vegan cafe where I met another Canadian trying to tell the Portuguese waiter that he was wrong, there was no Quebec City, Quebec is a province and it's Capital is Montreal. The problem was that the waiter had been to Quebec City.

So one week in Lisbon. I was going to find another farm to go to for March but the problem was that I realized I didn't want to. I wanted to go back to Casa do burro, to the goats. When I started travelling, or rather when I dropped school in Malaga and went to the Canary Islands, I told myself that this year I could do whatever I wanted and go wherever I pleased. I just have to get used to the fact that sometimes what I want to do is not what I expected that I would want to do. Usually I am insanely restless. I think I am losing this. Maybe. I shouldn't speak too quickly. But anyways all I wanted to do was go back to the goat farm so I came back. They all guessed that  Iwould be back in a week, and now that I am Dani keeps saying that we are going to start building my house.  The house of Annie. The other night I was like "ummm so Dani, does it matter how long I stay?" She never bothered to ask how long I was staying when I came back.
She just laughed, "what, you want to tell me what you want for your Christmas present or what?"
I took that as a no, it doesn't matter.
I think that in the end, when you are traveling, it might be better to create a few places you could call home instead of breezing through places that one day you will only remember by your pictures. Because when I came back, arrived in Lagos, got on a bus to Vila do Bispo, waited at the cafe for the dirty white van to come, drove through the woods with two punks singing to the radio and drinking beer, oddly enough, it felt like I was going home.
And when I walked over to the neighbours one night with the other wwoofers and the two new guys from Berlin felt it necessary to introduce me, it felt nice that the neighbours could just laugh and say, "really? this is Annie? I think we just may have seen her before...."
And when we walk to Pedralva and go to the one place we can find beer, it's nice the waiter knows me well enough to jokingly say they're closed when he sees me among the group. ( I tend to pay for beer with collected change I find, the first time I asked if it was okay to pay in change and he said, ya ya, of course, i need change. Then he realized that when I said change I meant mostly 1, 2, and 5 cent coins. hey, what can I say? beer here is cheap.)

But it's nice to be known. No matter which random situation you find yourself in, you can create a home by making yourself known.