Whereupon I do not have the opportunity to add "Beekeeper" to my resume.....

I spent the last two days in Boston where I had two job interviews. I accepted a job and am therefore ecstatic to report that I will be gainfully employed for the 2009-2010 school year. I returned back to Minnesota yesterday and proceeded to slip in and out of consciousness for the next 6 hours. It was an exhausting time in Boston, full of lots of tough decisions, intensive scoping out of Peter's bachelor pad to determine where I will be putting my stuff, and one verrrrry long drive to check out a school where I ultimately declined their (totally awesome and stellar) offer. The best part, of course, was catching up with my bestest friend and gay husband, Andrew. Our friendship picked up where it left off, though clearly we have both grown significantly wiser in the three years since we lived in Phoenix (and somehow we've also gotten better looking....:) ), a statement which can be corroborated by the fact that the evening didn't end with me cradling my head in my hands to keep the world from spinning while we discuss Jungian archetypes or read passages from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Yup. We used to be *those* people, and probably still are.....

I am tremendously excited about the year ahead, and I know it will be truly awesome. I feel so good about all of the decisions that I have made up to this point in my life, and I now feel ready to attack this next portion of my adulthood as I settle down with the love of my life, and get all of my ducks in a row to prepare for several new chapters in my professional life.

In other news, I ate a McFlurry and some Easy Mac for dinner tonight, and my stomach is having as hard of a time readjusting to food in the U.S. as it did adjusting to the food/water in Thailand. Granted, there are no parasites involved at this point, but still.

The world is incredibly different to me now. I guess it takes coming back to realize how much you've changed, how the old benchmarks by which you measured your existence or guaged your neuroses are no longer relevant. And I had remained so present in my experience and my life in Thailand, particularly during the last six months, that I sort of forgot about my frame of reference in the U.S. This isn't to say that I forgot about the people that I love here, or that I somehow lost myself. It's just that I became completely absorbed in these places, these cultures, and in my role as observer. It was a tremendously quiet time for me wherein I spent a lot of time contemplating and meditating and just watching (hence part of the reason why my blog went semi-neglected for so long). I was writing, but mainly in my pen and paper journal that was colored with ticket stubs and postcards and other assorted memorabilia. It was a respite, a retreat, and it was certainly not without its ups and downs. But it is astounding to me how thoroughly transformed I feel as I emerge from the other side of it all.

I miss Asia tremendously. TREMENDOUSLY. I think about my experiences there frequently, and I will still plan on writing about them here and in my journals. I am working on a memoir, but it may end up being something that is only for my eyes. We shall see. And obviously I gained a ton in my two years, and I have the Buddhas and stones and pearls and scarves and elephants and silk photo albums and fabulous clothes to prove it. And seriously, try not to vomit when I say this (no, you're gonna have to try pretty hard.....), but I think I will remember that time mostly in what I left behind. That is to say, there was a TON of demon wrestling that went on over there (which I didn't really write about on here, though I may have alluded to my various struggles once or twice, and written about some general life lessons), but I really feel like I left them in Thailand. Thailand absorbed a lot of my crap and helped me to transform it into something useful. Like fertilizer. Though I didn't literally mean, y'know, my crap......

Anyway.......

So there is a gratitude that gives my memories about Asia its particular pastel-colored shade, and even the difficult moments were worth it. I still have more to say about it all. Just because my time there is over doesn't mean that the storytelling has to be.

Thank you to those of you who were with me every step of the way!

You haven't heard the last of me.....bwahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!