My midpoint trip reflections :)

Okay, I've been asked (mainly by just my mom) to do a halfway check-in of the trip too. We're currently back in the US for my friend's wedding and to soak in some family time, and that's been really nice! Landing in SFO airport gave me a weird feeling of something somewhat familiar, and yet I'm like a tourist here too. But that tourist feeling dissipated quickly, once we were reunited with our family (both old and new!) 😚

welcome to the world, my little niece Rahi! 🥰

Some things that I've enjoyed on this trip, probably the most obvious, is being away from the repetitive nature of home life. Abroad, I have this never-ending curiosity for what the day is going to bring, and it feels like I'm starting with a blank slate everyday. You see beautiful sights, but you also get to meet different people and hear their stories. And its great, people are SO willing to open up to random stranger tourist 😂 Additionally, and this point wavers between being positive and negative, there is a constant feeling of trying to figure out how things work. Things like how a train system works in a country, or trying to find directions to a restaurant that Google Maps says is right in front of your face, but turns out Maps is totally wrong. These are the moments that give me a mixed feeling of stress but also some… excitement? I feel a bit more 'tuned in', trying to get this liiittle thing right, and it gives me this heightened sense of awareness to my surroundings - a feeling that I don't always get at home.

And no doubt, traveling with Adi has been wonderful. Its cliché yet sweet that we are creating shared memories that will come up over and over in conversation as the years pass by. Planning is a lot of work, and I joke that this trip is our baby that we're trying to raise (implement) successfully. I mean it's the only thing him and I have worked on together, aside from wedding planning! But the best part is having these moments that are emotionally satisfying, together. For example, we learned that you can't just Google whatever answer you need. The search results in another country hardly yield anything useful, even with translation turned on! So moments like working together to figure out the generic equivalent of the medicine you need with an Arabic-speaking pharmacist, tasting the best falafel sandwich we've ever had for $2, or being just a few feet away from a lioness as she stares you down without blinking 😰 …whatever it is, its still the best feeling to have these shared (and sometimes frightening) experiences with your best friend.

A popular question I get asked is how I've changed. Now I'm not trying to use this trip as some kind of Eat, Pray, Love experience, but of course there are things I hope to takeaway from it! One of the biggest things I can say is that traveling brings forth small yet steady pieces of inspiration, to take back home to my daily life. As the weeks pass, I have these vignettes in my mind from seeing how others live their lives. It could be as simple as watching how they interact with others (treating strangers like family), or what interesting spice blends they add to their cooking. These are the pocket-size learnings that I look forward to taking back home, so I can make tweaks to my own life and hopefully improve the quality of my life in a small way.

Lastly, I keep being faced with the juxtaposition of how both big and small the world is. It's big enough that there are endless things to discover, more than one can imagine! Yet it feels small when I notice how closely connected we all are when we talk about simple things like our favorite drinks, movies, or how crazy our younger siblings can be 😆. Seriously, I met a Turkish lady at a store who couldn't speak any English but when I told her I'm Indian, she broke into a song and dance from a Raj Kapoor movie. She doesn't know any Hindi either, and I still don't know how she knew the lyrics so well.  Another crazy thing: I ran into my family friend from my childhood days in San Jose, in Durban, South Africa! Just getting my hair cut at a salon and she walked in and we were basically this emoji for 5 min straight: 😱😱

🤣 all to emphasize… the world is damn small, man. But it's still fun and huge enough to explore where it'll never get boring, so long as you stay curious for it :)

Now it's time for me to go practice for a Sangeet dance (lol), catch ya next time! 💞