Back in Armagh almost exactly 11 months to the day when I left it and I have strange feelings of having made a shift in time and space. Part of me never left or time has just not moved on since I was last here – I’m not sure whch. The sweet smell in the air after the rain, the colorful splash of the pound notes that refuse to fit properly in my wallet, the hilly walk from the hostel to the AmmA Center and back again, all must reside with me at the cellular level. I wake and know where I am. I know what it smells like, how it tastes, what feels like on my body to be here. I feel comfortable and simply in sync as if the time away has been erased by the ocean that should lie between us. Time has not moved, I wake up here every day.

And yet, I’m different, the town is different, my bed is different. The hostel has been refurbished an the walls and blankets gleam clean an white. The mattresses are new, the linens inviting, the staff full of new faces. I have 8 new students from different regions of the US who I am just getting to know. I have a small hole in heart where the students from last year belong. Kimberley and Joan are here to teach with me and all is right in the world, but now Jack has joined us to teach journalism and I’m excited about how the Armagh Project is already changed from this new aspect.

It’s the same and it’s different. It’s then and it’s now. It is and it isn’t. So glad to back in this place that I never truly leave.