USA

The one thing that made Monday only slightly less than perfect was the certainty that Tuesday morning would come all too soon...and we had to leave Istanbul on Tuesday morning...Hasan for Ankara...and me for home.
That was a very difficult parting to say the very least. He took me to the airport and of course I cried, but it was a pathetic cry the kind where you feel so much but you are too tired to give your cry the full effort it deserves which makes you feel even worse than if you never cried at all. I wasnt ready to go or ready for that parting but I decided that I probably never would/will be. But I needed to leave so that Hasan could stop skipping classes to travel and hang out with me and so he could pass his last semester of college and graduate. I nearly stopped breathing when I walked through the security gates into the terminal...it took all I had to keep walking.
The trip back was long. On the first flight I sat by a nice American lady who does basically the same job I used to do working at a group home and was travelling with her siblings so it was nice to talk to her. I flew through Paris first, which in my opinion is a very poor airport. I had to take two shuttle buses to get to my plane and got practically strip-searched by a tiny wretched woman named Maria before I could board. Then I sat by a semi-nice German man who suffered from sever halitosis...ugg. The flights were all ok but the closer I got to home the stranger I felt and the less I could breath.
I called my parents when I got to the Cinncinatti airport last night - I didnt tell anyone I was coming home before that (so don't be offended that I didnt tell ya', I didnt tell anyone!) When I got to the MSP airport I didnt see them. I went to use the payphone to call them when I saw them coming down the escalator towards me. So I ducked my head down so they wouldn't see me. When their backs were to me I ran up behind them and surprised them. It was nice to have them both meet me there, even if I wasn't fully ready to be there or fully sure I wanted to be there. It feels like I left ten minutes ago. The roads and the places and everything are as familiar to me as the back of my own hand and they are as much a part of me as the back of my hand even when I havent seen them in ages.
I couldnt sleep last night...partly jet-lag and partly heart sickness. Readjusting and the culture shock that I am going to have here I think will be worse than all those of the past few months. I will be happy to see you my friends again though. My phone number is the same as before I left, so call me if you'd like, I'd be glad to hear from you I will continue to blog on here for some time and will try to finally show you a few pictures. Please bear with me while I continue my gungula...it is not over because I am back here in MN, it has only just begun.....

At long last the time has come. In a few short hours I will depart. It is a very strange sensation. This is something I have dreamt of for years and now I'm not sure how to feel. I'm sort of numb, sort of nervous, sort of ecstatic, and sort of feel drunk or something (I'm not though). My first flight takes me from Minneapolis to Chicago, then from there to LA, then the monster of all the flights, the 16 hours from LA to Hong Kong. Then I sit in Honk Kong airport for 6 hours (hopefully I will be able to stop at the lounge and buy a massage and take a shower) Then on to Thailand then finally, at around 10am central time on Thursday I will arrive in Bombay. I should be pretty crabby and ready to kiss land by that time. I really hate goodbyes. Especially because I'm from Minnesota. They take like an hour each and that is really emotionally draining when you are saying so many of them in the span of a few days! Tomorrow will probably be really hard. I hope I'm not blubbering like an idiot when I'm sitting in the airport by myself, I bet I'd look pretty funny. Thats all for now...I bet I'll have more to tell by the next time I get to a computer.

As a kid your parents teach you all of the standard things you will need to know when you are grown. My parents were no exception and sometimes they even hooked me up with some extras. For example my dad taught me the very important and useful last letter of the alphabet. No not "z". Clearly that is not an extremely useful letter. The real last letter (if you ask my dad anyway) is "gungula". There is no key for it on your keypad so stop looking. Gungula is when you write all of the letters of the English alphabet on top of each other in the same spot (though I suppose there is a version of gungula available in any language). It ends up looking sort of like what you would get if you asked a three year old to draw you a picture of a cat (but if you use the Hindi alphabet it looks like a cow...wierd). Anyway, why is that letter so useful? It is all incusive, it means everything and anything all at the same time. That is why I have decided that it is the only word/letter of the alphabet to describe what I will be doing in the next few/several months of my life. In 12 days I will be leaving the US to travel around the globe for an indefinite number of days. Since I havent a clue what is in store for me, I imagine it will be a life changing time full of trials, joys, adventures, homesickness, discovery, amazement, food poisoning (ok well I really hope not), and...EVERYTHING! This is where I will update about where I am and what I'm doing. Please keep in touch via e-mail, because as I mentioned already, I'm sure I'll be homesick at times because I'll really miss all of you!