People ask me how I like England, and sometimes they're shocked by how much I like it. They aren't impressed with the beauty or history or any of the things I find so fascinating; they think it's boring - because it's so normal to them. Meanwhile, I'm a complete tourist, taking pictures of everything - streets, signs, buildings, statues, scenes - at every turn (thank God for Google Photos!).

Yes, I really am that tourist...

It's pretty fantastic here, but it's actually making me appreciate home more too. Because home is just as fascinating to other people as here is to me. Some people travel to other places, like England, and think it's so marvelous and never want to go back home to where it's boring, but that's how the English feel about their country, and that's how Italians and French and Spanish feel about their countries. We're so used to our cities and countries that we don't appreciate them, and the most amazing things are taken for granted to us. And then, here, somewhere new, the most mundane things seem absolutely amazing.

From the Oxford Botanical Gardens

When I walk down the streets and see amazing sunsets, I pause to relish the sight and feel uplifted. I notice more here, and it just seems better here sometimes. Autumn changes colours, and I get so excited, like I'm a child who's never seen it happen before. But it's just that I'm noticing and appreciating it here. And I should do the same at home and anywhere I go. There is beauty everywhere - sometimes it's a beauty transcending borders (like a sunset or oncoming autumn), and sometimes it's local beauty unique to that place (like the Canterbury Cathedral), and sometimes (usually) it's both - but there is beauty, so much beauty, everywhere. I'm loving it here - I really am - and I'm very glad to be a tourist. I embrace it, because tourist means I find absurd delight in what others take for granted

Just outside Canterbury, past Westgate