"So how was your trip?"

by Sara

What a question to answer. Then of course there is "Isn't there a lot of poverty there?" Whew - that's tough one....

First off, I have to say that there is something mind-erasing about jet travel. Once you make it through security - it is like your whole past never existed. Stepping out of India onto that plane was very strange. I did take one flight within India with the kids and it was similar - I was suddenly from a different planet, but knew all about the one I was riding. But now that we are back I feel an urgent need remember what my life was like there, and to evaluate this return process - which for me is always so much more difficult than the change to someplace new (another thought I hope to elaborate on...)

Let me also say, that this "public diary" has been very useful to me this year. Somehow my thoughts are more dynamic when typing, and particulary typing while online. What I write on a napkin or a notebook (contrary to what one might imagine) always seems to come out so trite and artificial. But here - it is somehow so fluid that I reveal more in a more authentic mode. As you may have also noticed in my musings, I have not done much to "paint a picture" of our experiences, rather the blog has been a place for me to spill my thoughts in times of need. I'm sure that gives a strange skew to the whole story.

So - "being back" Well, with the purchase of our return tickets (which cost about as much as our whole year there) we wiped out our bank account and are struggling with mixed bag of happy to be back in familiar surroundings, but can't really afford to enjoy it much, so we'd better set up some regular income ASAP.

Well, since Ajay has been encouraging me to get back out into the world, that ASAP part has fallen to me. And I'm not that good at it. For starters, it is so sudden (although we have been talking about it for months) that I want to run back and play with Satya, Violet and Tara rather than beat the proverbial pavement. I'm also very concerned about starting the wrong thing out of desperation and being stuck with a way of life that is not what i had envisioned in my time of freedom.

We have come back to a great deal of prosperity and my personal needs have changed over the year, so I need to be quite thoughtful about how to deal with the anomalies.

Here's a good example from our current situation: Back in January we learned of an opening at a community in the Seattle area that we visited three years back and really enjoyed. Now have rented a 2BR nearby with the hopes of finding work and (un)schools that would justify us putting in an offer on the land and moving up here....[never finished this and already life is moving too fast!]

See you in real time!