Epilogue

My flight touched down in Minneapolis and the man in the seat in front of me told someone very loudly on his cell phone, "Whew! I'm dyin' to go to Chili's for lunch!" And with that exclamation I realized I was certainly no longer in Europe.

I have not yet been in the USA in the year 2009, and since this time last year I was leaving for Ireland, I have now spent seven of the last twelve months in a different country. This fact, combined with the fact that I hadn't slept in a good 36 hours left me in quite a state of cultureclashtastic confusion for my first moments back in America. I passed through customs, re-checked my baggage, and exchanged my Euros for Dollars experiencing for the first time in five months customer service situations dealing with speakers of my own language. I spoke very slowly and clearly with lots of gestures out of habit and was shocked that everyone seemed to understand me--and I understood them! In my state of delirious fatigue and culture shock I wandered into a gift shop and paged through a copy of People Magazine only to discover that I have missed half a year of pop culture and celebrity gossip. Setting the magazine down, I glanced around the shelves and my eyes landed upon plastic wrapped "turkey-jerky." I gazed, entirely puzzled, for several moments. I think I have forgotten a lot of things about America.

My final hours of travel were appropriately adventurous, exhausting, and decadent. I left Prague for Paris where I met up with my friend Alex Bair who spent this last semester studying in London. We enjoyed a karma-cursed trip to the Eiffel tower--metro ticket trouble, angry security guards, rain, freezing wind--but at least we came away with a few funny stories. The next day we took a decadent trip out to decadent Versailles to see lots of 18th century decadence. After a full day of sightseeing somehow we had forgotten to eat for most of the day (in France?!) so we had a very tasty sidewalk cafe dinner followed by a decadent, decadent dessert.

After that I almost missed my overnight bus to Amsterdam due to more bad karma with the Paris metro. I arrived early in the morning in Amsterdam, bid farewell to Europe, and flew to Minnesota--the North star state, the land of lakes, the mall of America, and turkey jerky.

My flight to Oregon was, of course delayed just long enough for me to become extremely impatient and really hungry. That was all made up for by the fact that I had a window seat for the amazing views of the mountains flying in. Upon my arrival in Portland my mother was shocked to see my Indian nose ring, but she forgave me in time to take me to Baja Fresh. I am proud to say that after five months in India I was able to handle the hot salsa for the first time.

I has been an amazing year. I've learned so much and had so many adventures, but I really am looking forward to some time at home. This summer will have many more interesting experiences in store as I attempt to complete an American yoga teacher's certification course. This will be followed in the fall by my final semester at Occidental. And then comes the great mysterious adventure of graduation.

Thanks everyone for reading along! I hope it was entertaining. Namaste, and see you soon!