Home!

I made it! I'm here! In North America!

The flight home went about as smoothly as 17hrs of flights can go. Got some sleep, didn't have anyone too large encroaching on my seat, didn't have to pay for airplane food, had no more than the average number of crying babies in my immediate vicinity. I do think that the 3 months of travel have made me "more comfortable being uncomfortable" as I've said before, which made the flight more bearable.

While it is great to be home and see Katie, Mocha, and Zipper, it is also strange to be home. But strange not in how different everything is, but in how normal and familiar it is. Really has that "was it all just a dream" feeling. Gonna take some time to adjust as I expected. Also going to take some effort to integrate the perspective that I've gained from the trip into my everyday life, because it is clearly easy just to slip right back into the old routines and patterns without even noticing. The fact that I'm changing jobs and going to have to start anew should force a certain amount of reinvention though, and that's probably good.

My body is almost back to Pacific Time. And expect to legitimately start working tomorrow (even though its Columbus Day! My new boss is a real slave driver!) This weekend has mainly about sleeping, hanging out with the family (we all went on our favorite hike by Lake Berryessa today!), and starting to go through the chores that Katie's been staving up for me. And watching footballs games where you can use your hands. And baseball. Ah, glorious baseball...

Went to Costco yesterday to look at laptops. That was surreal. Night Markets in Laos and Costco have very little in common. And there are sooo many Americans in America. I'm not used to it.

Anyway, that's it for now. Definitely have some alot more though to talk about, so stay tuned. Also I plan to sort through my (literally) 1000's of pictures at some point to put together a little package for y'all that is a little more digestible. Any of you that actually want to see the 1000's should probably just go to SE Asia. It would probably be faster and certainly more entertaining.

OK, hope to see many of you soon!

-erik