Back. Welcome!

As I sit here, it is almost 3 weeks to the day since I left my friendly little school and apartment in Japan and headed off on a round-the-world adventure that would take me from the soft landscapes of rural Japan to the staggering beauty of San Diego, and from the charming lanes of Atlanta to the rugged streets of Vietnam. In short, it has been a long, strange, and utterly wonderful trip.

First, let's talk mileage. 2.5 weeks on the road, 10 flights, 7 airports, at least 8 trips through the metal detector, and a lot of surprisingly good airline food. In total, I covered more than 20,000 miles in the sky, and put in plenty more on the ground in trains, cars, buses, motorbikes, and these little half-bike, half-rickshaw things called cyclos in Vietnam.

Why, you may ask, did I willingly opt to spend the better part of 45 hours careening through the air in expensive metal tubes? Well, there are 2 reasons. Firstly, I needed a home injection quite badly. Others may have the mental fortitude to live for years on end in another country without coming home, but I don't know how they do it. I get homesick! After signing the papers that committed me to another year here, I knew that I needed a trip home to refresh myself, see family and friends, and recharge my batteries. I felt it deep down that I should go. Second(ly), Hong and I have dreamed of visiting Vietnam for years (the place of her birth...there is a monument, I swear!), and we saw the distinct lack of classes in March as our golden opportunity to steal away. And so we did.

To conserve ultra-precious vacation time, I daringly scheduled these mighty journeys back to back, joined at the hip in Japan. I was to fly back from Atlanta, and early the next morning, we were to leave for Vietnam. I had just enough time to present Hong with my precious cargo, a treasured bag of Spicy Hot Cheetoes that she had requested from America. Think about how hard it was to get a bag of fragile little Cheetoes from San Diego through Atlanta and to Japan. My main objective was getting them to her mouth before they reached the dust stage of existence. No Cheetoe deserves that.

This trip encompassed so much that it got my mind into a frenzy just trying to make sense of it all when it was over. In only one day, I had left my little life here in Japan and re-entered my "regular" life in California. Suddenly I was home and cars were bigger, roads were bigger, I could make small talk with waitresses (nice, I like), and I could see my family. It was an incredible, shocking change. It wasn't until after more than 2 days that I finally felt at home, and after that I just sank into it like an old jacket. It was inexpressibly wonderful. Just knowing that it was so brief made me appreciate it all the more, and I savored every bit like a precious morsel.

Coming to Vietnam was one of the more shocking experiences I've had in my life. I had tried to prepare myself mentally for the poverty and general chaos that I knew I would find there, but I was totally unprepared when I stepped out of that airport in Ho Chi Minh City. The heat, the noise, the people, the clamoring for business, it was more than I've seen in a while. As Hong and I rode silently in our taxi to the hotel, my eyes were wide watching the broken concrete and dusty dirt piles that counted as sidewalks, and the seemingly uncontrolled mass of motorbikes that swarmed past us at all times, and the people who, it seemed, were everywhere. This was a teeming mass of life, and it was powerful and visceral and alluring. After 7 months in Japan and a lifetime in America, I knew I was about to see a different way of doing things. A way of doing things that involves peeing on the street. Get ready.

I think I'll leave it there for tonight while I let the juices stew. Goodnight, dear readers, except Nick.