One Week Home

It's been a week now since the airport bus dropped me off outside the darkened fairgrounds in the sub-freezing night.  I'd been warned that we were having a tremendous cold snap, but how does one prepare after a month away in the tropics?

For several nights I woke up very confused, not knowing where I was.  Even last night, waking up to go pee, it took me awhile to realize I was back home in California.  It really is an amazing thing to be standing on the other side of the planet one day and back the next.

People ask me how my trip was, hoping perhaps to get a short, satisfying answer.  Ha!  I'm more likely to come after them with my iPad full of photographs and long stories, now oft repeated.  I should just tell them to read this blog if they are really interested.  Or just say "fantastic!". 

Before I ever traveled overseas, I asked my friend Susan what the big deal was.  She'd take off for three or four weeks at least once a year.  She was the first person I knew who'd been to Thailand.  She told me that the memories from travel are different--far more rich and dense with experience.  So true.

It was a little harder this time to be traveling solo.  There's such a natural desire to turn to one's friend and say "Whoa!  Look at that!".....at least for me.  I got to do a bit of that with strangers, fellow travelers also having their minds blown.  But I'm very grateful to have been able to share my trip with you, dear reader. 

Traveling across the planet to places of incredible beauty, but where local people are so humble, or even poor--it made me so aware of my good fortune, and so grateful for the experience.