Homesick!  It's grey, it's drizzly, it's foggy, but mostly it's just grey.  I feel like I'm hibernating.  This definitely isn't the place to be a claustrophobic.  The sky is lower, the houses smaller, the people are closer.  We leave home in the morning for school where I work non-stop surrounded by students and teachers and parents from 9 to 3:30 or 5, depending on the day, without ever stepping outside.  By the time we finish with after-school activities and errands, we're home between 5 and 6.  It's now getting dark early so we don't open the curtains and often don't even bother to open the metal shutters that keep the bad guys out.  Though it's the same darkening, turning to winter, in Maine it feels very different.  For one thing we have so many windows there that let light in and allow the eye to travel far and wide.  Even on a bright day it's shady in here with the overhang of the building, the other apartment buildings blocking the sun and the heavens.  Plus here in the land of the populated, you have to close everything up at night so the neighbors don't spy on you.  I also find that outside at home is so much more outside-y with it's clean air and those big open spaces and lots of sky.  Heavy sigh.  I need to get away for a while.  Fortunately next week is school autumn break so as mentioned we're off to Dublin.  It will still be city, it will still be grey and rainy no doubt, but it will be different.