A couple weeks gone by in red white and blue, putting together what I think this trip did to me

Since I flew over America and landed at the heart of the United States, a lot has happened.

I got home, visited my sweet grandparents in Connecticut, moved into my cozy room and dorm, and began to think about about the actual doing of this coming school year. The ideas had to fade, and the doing began. It was a cool sensation to be back. I've heard sometimes its weird, but it was just cool to be back in the same place for second consecutive year. It felt mildly like being home again with a chance to start over and keep whatever I wanted.

So I began to construct my class schedule on google calendar, look for a cell phone provider (I found a blackberry), buy the extras for my room, buy food, do laundry (some that had seen the sunshine on Lake Titicaca), unpack my collection of goodies, buy books, and talk to people here.

Its unimaginable the amount of time and mental energy doing those simple things takes. Fortunately, I've got it all pretty much settled, and now the real good stuff starts: actually doing readings, posting responses, going to sections, ordering more books, finding a job or internship that looks good for the semester, going and doing things at the club meetings, as well as getting my brain back into normal school mode. These are all pleasant. I feel like I can't speak in class yet, until i've gotten my brain adjusted to the jargon of the class. I can speak spanish well. I've especially enjoyed going to the club meetings filled with mostly spanish speaking girls. (It has dawned on me about once a month every month I've been here that this community has an overabundance of gorgeous girls, its quite hard to believe.)

If I were to share with you the speakable effects that this trip has had on me, I would have to mention three things. They obviously don't coalesce like this in the mind, but in order to allow anyone to understand them, I've categorized them, like a good intellectual would do. The first one is communicating. After countless moments communicating with strangers, something in my head clicked. It's just easier now to get what I want respectfully and comfortably from another person. I want to say I'm better at reading people too.

The second thing would be an understanding of how I liked traveling best. I'm refering to speed, company, nature of the places, time, comfort. This trip was the one that will set the tone for the ones to come, and will be the one I think back to when I think of personal traveling.

The third thing that has changed noticeably is my independence. I can alomst confidently say that I can be stable and content while being completely alone, something I lacked when I began school (and which too many people lack here.) The time in solitude on the trip did this. I have doubted my retension of this skill during the first chaotic week, where my head at times nearly goes haywire and my productivity goes to crap, something that bothered me a lot last year. My Buddhism class will might teach me how to control this phenomena, I would have to call it a phenomena.

Despite the difficulty in communicating this, if there would be a forth general effect it would be to have acquired a better understanding of the levels (or moods, states of mind, phases) my mind enters when in a travel mode. (The travel mode has many similarities to the routine here, I think, therefore this might be valuable.) I can now identify them and begin to understand their causes and remedies. I think of this as part of getting to "know thyself."

So I'm going to take advantage of the lure I feel to the still mistical New City of York and go do something in Harlem before this Friday slips away. Check in with whoever you are soon.