My great big GUNGULA!

Wow, its unreal that I have been home for three months. It is not what I expected, but then life rarely is. I scheme and I dream of possible next steps, new adventures. But right now, I am here and I think I need to be. My biggest wish is that I could be happy and have peace and come out of this stuff better, not bitter. Trials do eventually make you stronger but they can be numbingly painful. I'm too stubborn and yet too stupidly...oh I dont even have a word for it. It resonates in me...like once I care for a person, I'm just screwed, they have me hooked forever. My heart and soul are completely at their mercy. Be this a friend, family member or significant other. For me there is just no telling what will set it off. It is my greatest weakness. I build up walls to protect myself, but some people with their crazy magic voodoo still get in. Then I let them tear me all to shreds. I guess I have learned that even when I hurt so badly I think I'll probably die from the pain, in fact I will not die, and I will even be ok eventually, and I will be stupid enough/weak enough to let someone else do it all over again. What a crazy stupid life it is sometimes. I never claimed to live safely or sanely. Sometimes I think I'd like it better if I did, but I know my soul would thirst. So I'm doomed to repeat my circular fate of taking chances, loving too much and losing. And keep hoping beyond reason that eventually something will happen or someone will happen and break the circle. Now that you are all slightly confused, I'm going to leave it at that and go get some dinner. As usual, I hope you all are doing well and I hope you are living life fully.

I have sat down to write a new entry several times now but somehow I just cant think of anything I want to say. Ok not completely true. I want to say things about exciting places I am exploring. However I have been back in the states now for seven weeks and am no longer out venturing in the world. I have a job now. Its not half bad. I'm managing group homes again.
Its been really wierd the past few weeks. I've been having flashbacks to India, Australia, Turkey, Thailand. All at really unexpected times. I kind of figured this would happen eventually. I had a lot of experiences in a very short period of time so now they are all catching up to me and I'm finally processing them. Yesterday out for walk in my neighborhood I smelled something smokey and suddenly I was back to a dusty, dirty street in Ambarnath, India walking to the cyber cafe. Very specific moments flash in my mind.
I often feel a kind of heartsick longing when I look at pictures of Romania, Italy, New Zealand and other places I havent been yet and the same for places I have been to and miss.
I was thinking yesterday about how it wasn't love at first sight at any of the places I've visited. I actually was pretty put off from my first impressions of each country but I had the desire to find what made each place loveable and unique. That is part of what makes travel so great. Some culture differences are obvious and easy, but others you have to work for. Thats what I love. You have to change your thinking to catch a glimpse of those things.
I'm trying to reconnect with this life in the US. It is really hard. It's been almost two months since I came "home". My friends are still my friends...kind of and for the most part. It is difficult to get back into routines and into anything that feels right.
Looking back, I feel like a different person than I was a year ago. Not just because of traveling, just life experiences in general. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, just a thing. So many things that I once assumed to be absolute about life, about myself, about other people have been challenged. I feel the same but expanded.
Thats all for tonight, g'night all

Well, it has been three weeks now since I returned to Minnesota. I have to say I am much less inspired to write from here. There was definitely a crash and burn effect to coming home. I was riding high and and coming here I suddenly collapsed. I am not the most depressed I have ever been by any means but I'm not my "usual self" either. The past few weeks I have been a bit under the weather with allergies, colds, stomache issues and post trip blues, all of which have made me completely lazy and lack in the energy department. After this trip I'm not my usual self so that is big part of the challenge. I find myself seeing things differently and even experiencing things I once found normal as if they were completely foreign. It is kind of difficult to sort through all of those things because it's something hard to relate to others unless they've gone through it themselves. So I find myself trying to do those ordinary things and be happy doing them but I'm not really connecting with my surroundings very well yet. I'm becoming a bit more of an introvert than I usually am. I'm not sure if thats a bad thing, its just a thing right now. So its hard to write because I just feel a bit down and don't feel anyone will completely understand. The only semi productive things I have done are to print off my picture and put them in albums and I've begun the job search process (which in and of itself is a reason to be depressed!) I don't write because all I want to do is complain, but I really have no good reason to complain when really I should be talking about how fortunate I am. Ummmmmm, soooo that is my uber lame update. Hope everyone is well :P

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.....

Hi all So Istanbul was interesting. We took an overnight train there from Ankara, which was so nice, especially after all those stinky buses! About half an hour before we arrived I reached into my backpack and miraculously sliced the tip of my thumb off with my razor that was hiding inside my bag. Holy crap was that painful! Poor Hasan nearly had heart failure because it was bleeding so badly and I was crying in pain. Fortunately I remembered all the necessary info from my first aid classes so I managed to control the bleeding and not pass out. To add to the fun it was pouring rain when we arrived and had to find a taxi to take me to a hospital. Two cab rides later we got to an open hospital where a young doctor who spoke English cleaned and bandaged my finger up and gave me a prescription for pain pills and antibiotics. Anyway I'll be fine and most likely my thumbprint will grow back. (Ewwww I know) Soooo after that we had a big hassle over which of the friends and relatives were going to host us while we were there and everyone was upset and offended with us for not agreeing to stay with them the whole time we were there. Eventually we divided it up and agreed to stay one day with one family and the other two days letting someone else host us. So then, we went out in Istanbul to the old bazaar which was basically the Mall of America in ancient times. It was absolutely huge. You could easlily get lost in there. I bought a bunch of gifts and stuff and Hasan bargained and got me great prices because he is so stinkin' charming and likable. Then we went and smoked an apple nargile at this place that is an ancient tomb - you walk past a bunch of tousand year old grave stones on your way in! Then we spent the evening having dinner with Omar's family (though he couldnt come with us to Istanbul). They were really nice and of course didnt let me leave without my hands full of gifts. The next day we went to the bazaar again but it was closed so we just walked around the city for a while and looked at a bunch of the ancient mosques and tombs and various structures. We went and looked inside the Blue Mosque...it was so amazing and intricately decorated. We tried going inside Hagi Sophia, the church which is right across the street from there but it was already closed. We walked in the gardens around it instead and ate some Ottoman candy from a street vendor who was dressed in goofy traditional Ottoman clothes. We had a cherry nargile at another tomb place - it was most excellent We had a walk through a beautiful park to the sea side. The whole city is full of tulips in bloom right now...ahhh....gorgeous. Then we took a bus to the other side of the city to the main street area where most of the college kids and tourists hang out. We walked around and found a place to have a turkish coffee fortune read (which is a really popular thing to do there). You drink your thick turkish coffee and when you get down to the solid stuff on the bottom you tip your glass upside down and wait for about 10 minutes for the stuff to slide down the edges and dry then the fortune teller reads what the shapes mean. The crazy lady made up a whole bunch of stuff and tried to look all knowing and mystical - which was pretty funny....maybe I can get a job as a coffee fortune reader! After a few turkish hamburgers we called it a night and caught a dolmus back. (Dolmus's are a form of public transporation that are like short buses and almost always have insane drivers.) Then on Monday we went again to try to see Hagi Sophia but it was closed so we spent most of the beautiful sunny day lazily walking around and exploring the Topkapi palace and museum. It was really interesting. It is an old Ottoman palace and has a ton of sort of random artifacts housed there. There was the famous 86 karat Kisikci diamond, hairs of the prophet Mohammed, armor and swords from various surrounding regions, a piece of the scull and hand of John the Baptist...etc...very interesting! We took a nap on the nice green lawn then had some of the famous meetballs of the area and went back to our favorite nargile place from the first day and relaxed for a few hours. It was a perfect day except for one thing...