Well, la di da, la di da, I am back in the US. Yes, firmly, 100% entrenched in the land of my birth. Which has given me two issues, one Major and one Minor. The major issue being what I am going to do with myself now that I am here, and the minor one being what I am going to do with my traveler's blog now that I am no longer traveling around the world in more the 80 days.
The reason I call the latter issue minor is because it is easily solvable. I am going to transform my blog into a movie review site, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. And as for the major issue, well, let's just say my quest is in progress.

Before I abandon the original use of my blog, I would like to take a moment and reflect on the last year. Over the past eleven months I have been a mzungu, gringa, palangi, and well, several Thai and Khmer terms for white person which I was never able to translate phonetically. In Khmer it sounds something like fulang. Whether a matter of race, ethnicity, nationality, or language, I was the minority, the outsider looking in on a world at once entirely different but often resoundingly familiar in fundamentals from what I have grown up knowing. And I never once took for granted the gracious treatment I most often received from those whose cultures and lives I stepped into, as it is not a human duty to embrace the unknown, but a generosity of spirit that I always welcomed and appreciated as I was doing my best to open myself to new ideas and places. So for those whom I met on my travels who will read this and for those who will not, I thank you all for helping me to shed some naivete and ease any doubts I entertained on the goodness of people in general.

Going to new places changes you. Why? I don't know exactly. After all, many of the things I saw I had or could have found in a book, and many of the things I did I could have discovered through someone else's account. But what I realized is that what we take in solely through our eyes can provide only the vaguest notion of the actuality of place. The sound of the drum's gong calling the monks to rise, the taste of homemade chapati, the feel of the sweat freezing as it trickles down your back as you struggle to finish the ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the middle of the night, or the burn of the scorching sun at midday on white sandy beach on an idyllic island in the South Pacific, it is the sum of the sensations that take a flat vision into a three dimensional experience. However beautiful a picture or elegant a word, nothing can install the reality like the real. And the assault of the particular sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations of a foreign locale transform a black and white outline of a place into a colored, shaded in, and completed, picture. The experience generates a depth of knowledge and awareness previously untapped. The difference is being there.

So now I know that Mt. Kilimanjaro was as hard as I could have imagined, that living the late night schedule of Argentina is difficult, that however perfect an island looks on a computer screen saver it is an illusion that doesn't take into account sweat and sunburns and possible sharks, and that in Vietnam they call the Vietnam War the American War, that you really don't feel like you are falling when sky-diving, that the flies are too affectionate in the Outback, and that Snowy Mountains are even better in person than on the screen in The Man from Snowy River. That everything is better in person. But what should I do with all that I learned? I am open to any suggestions. I do know that such largesse of experience places a burden of responsibility on my shoulders to find a way to give back some of what I was given on my trip, and I accept it happily. As I said above, a work in progress folks, a work in progress.

Thanks for reading, and safe journey, wherever it may lead you!