Back from Ukraine!

A month of no posts can only mean great adventures have been had. Right? I'm in an internet cafe in the Detroit airport, and my head is appropriately swimming with those pseudo-profound thoughts that come from being half way between big things in your life and also halfway in between actual days. Our trip to Ukraine offered all those classic bonding opportunities that get a group to really come together-- feeling quite moved, feeling lost, feeling gratitude and excitement and working hard to make good music together and all the other things that happen when you travel-- and I know that at this point, I really wouldn't be doing anyone any service by attempting to offer a summation of the trip, mainly because I'm not yet feeling fully back yet and one needs a bit of distance to know what one really came away from the experience with, you know? Hmm, that was a long and complicated sentance. The woman across from me is wearing a pink zipper jacket with "Mrs. Dessert" in calligraphic script across the back. Maybe I'm still in Ukraine...

There are a few reflections I can attempt to put down now, since I've done explored this side of the airport already and I still have at least an hour to kill in this sunny little corner before flying back to the city of my birth. Hokay! Let's see. I already wrote to Asa and told him this, but I shall say again: earlier this morning/last night on the overnight flight, I woke up in a daze to the comforting sound of him & Diana gossiping together in the seats behind me, and I sort of smiled to find myself back on the Sheep Mobile, heading to another concert... until I realized that it was not them, that they weren't there, and that I wasn't back in the van (that part wasn't so sad). But I sort of realized that what being home means is that I won't wake up to find my 12 friends wandering all over whatever series of homes we've invaded and trying to suss out the plan for the day. I miss you already, friends.

[and can I say, just quickly, how much more compounded my thoughts are due to this Ukraine experience following an intense 5 weeks of summer camp? It's been a long, nomadic summer full of all sorts of interesting and shifting social situations.]

Another thing I want to get down, mostly for my own sake, is this newfound motivation I feel to make lists and then get them done. Just a general life-organizing and the desire to (in Deva's words) ban the words 'I used to be able to' from my vocabulary. So I'm really going to try to get a Rosetta Stone program, try for a higher level of fluency in any of the languages I've half-assedly started to learn; also get back into belly dance; also join the yoga studio down the street; also send more letters and mix-tapes and care packages to friends (I started that one already this summer, to great satisfaction. Right, Jordan and Lauren?). Also travel more within the States and see the people who(m) I miss. Granted, this is all sort of laughable with the omnipresent Thesis looming ahead plus having a full time, 5-days a week job, but at this point in my sleep-deprevity (is that a word?) I feel like making that list anyway. I guess what I feel is a great sense of potential re: the nearish future.

Um, what else. I rediscovered through traveling again that yup, I still really do like myself. A work in progress, certainly, and there are lots of nit-picky details I could get into, but overall I'm pretty proud to be who I am. So, that's something. Surely, if one can pick up and land in another place with a bunch of strangers and come out the other side with warm fuzzy feelings and a greater sense of self, one is on the right path. Right?

Okay. Off to the plane. Lots of love and LOTS of pictures coming soonish.