I can't believe, frankly, it's been six weeks I've been down here. It aggravates me to look back on that much time and not really be able to recall where I put it. I suppose technically I’m not traveling, I couldn’t truthfully say that. Technically I’ve been installed here in this region (for 2 months), but I can’t say I feel settled, on the contrary, I feel like I’m on the move. I still experience those hallmarks of traveling solo: exhilaration and lonesomeness. Exhilaration of discovery - of people, food, sounds, groovy little postcolonial corners, and splendid riverscape views - and the slightly less sexy joy of bumming around new markets - discretely dipping my fingers in barrels of dried beans (if it's ever possible for me to do anything discreetly ...) and hopping over rivulets of rotten vegetables and avoiding eye contact with the more aggressive vendors. And feeling also something like a ravenousness to take it all in. And lonesomeness, well, speaks for itself. When those things fade into habituation - I suppose that signals the end of one’s traveling.

Describing the process of adjustment into a foreign place, a very wise professor told me this: people don’t see you for who you are, but for who they perceive or want you to be. A lot of times - and I assume this is especially true in instances where there is a language barrier - you can find yourself more or less knowingly conforming to THAT person, at the loss of a bit of your own personality. Per Petterson brushes up against this idea in Out Stealing Horses, (and his Nordic protagonist has only moved a couple hours north): People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours […] it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.
(OK a little hardened, a little valid nonetheless. When it gets problematic is when their own feelings, opinions, and assumptions are shaped by a very different life experience and understanding of the world; then they really miss the boat.)