So, I haven't blogged here for awhile, and I think it's about time. I'm having trouble deciding which other pictures if any I want to post here. I get the distinct impression that this blog is pretty much a private site - as much as I know that anyone could access it, I don't think that anybody really will.

Things have all felt pretty surreal since I've come back from my trip. I look at the pictures, and remember taking them, but it feels like it was a lifetime ago. I'm not sure why, but I imagine it has something to do with how AMAZING my trip was, and how much the SAME my life is in the States. Perhaps everyone feels like that after a great vacation.

The only parallel I have in my own life was the time I spent living in Ecuador that summer during college. But that was so different I have trouble comparing the two. For one thing, I was gone long enough during such a volatile period of my life (between sophomore and junior year of college) that not only did I change while I was there, but my world in Iowa changed while I was gone too. I knew before I boarded the plane that my life would permanently be cut into two pieces - before Ecuador, and after.

I guess with all that went on during my vacation, I kind of feel like that now, as if there should be a clear cut difference in my life before and after - but there doesn't seem to be. And logically, I can't see why there would be. I wasn't gone very long, and I came back to the same living situation, the same job, the same friends, and thus, the same life. If the trip did change me, I'm probably too close to the situation to be a good judge, and perhaps, whatever changes there have been will require specific situations to show themselves.

Basically I just smoke more now than I did before I left.