back home...missing India

In case anyone has not realized by my lack of recent posts, I have made it home from Chennai safely. My (several) flights back were uneventful and all my luggage actually made it which was quite a pleasant surprise.

Following my moms suggestion, I am posting a few final thoughts because frankly, I am extremely long winded and I know that when I see people in person I can't convey things as well in conversation as I can in writing. Go figure.

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Something I didn't expect: I miss it already. I was glad to get home because I hadn't seen my family in months. But somehow I miss the chaos of that crazy city. I miss the kids I was living with; it was like being in the dorms all over again. I miss buying lunch for pennies. I got very used to the lifestyle of working with children during the day, going out at night and traveling on the weekends.

I think I can attribute such a positive experience to being in a great group. First of all, IAPA as an organization did a pretty job of making sure we were taken care of, well fed, safe and healthy. We, the students, made sure we had SO MUCH FUN.

I know I keep talking about "the group" but the other teachers really were terrific to work with. If i hadn't been there with 20 other intelligent, passionate and worldly people, it wouldn't have been the same. As a whole, the other kids spoke several languages, Spanish, French Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati (sp?) most of which were very useful in our part of India.

We also because really close, as you could imagine. When I think back to all the time we spent traveling together and working together and living in close quarters together; I think I could write a book about everyone, their life story, their goals, their pet peeves, their jr. high crushes. ...and then some. And then we had to split up. The last day we were all in CSI was like summer camp, where we all had to return each others stuff that we had borrowed throughout the course of the program. Ellen, my friend from ASU, lamented that she and three others would miss us all the most because she didn't go to UA and wouldn't see us as frequently. I think it will be sad when all of us aren't living down the hall from each other any more. For this reason, I promised her that Deepa and I would call her up everyone once in a while and say,

"wanna walk to Spencer's for lunch? Do you have bug spray I can use? Who stole my progression poster??"

It will be just like sweating it out in Chennai all over again...

The following are a few "happy snaps" of me and all my new best friends. [Thanks Deeps]

I MISS YOU ALL!!

<3>

[Believe it or not I still have more closing thoughts to write about... so keep checking back to the good ole blog. Once I sort through all my pictures I am going to start posting a slide show of the highlights. However that might take a while because I have thousands of pictures. Literally. Thousands. ]

still more later

-S