America.Ari

It's 10:30 AM here in Bellevue, a wealthy suburb of Seattle located on Samamash lake. I'm staying with my good friend Chris at his parent's house before I fly to San Francisco for five days and then to Taiwan to spend a week with an old family friend before finally going to Chennai, India for a year to work for a small publishing company, Tara Books. Chris and his girlfriend are still asleep, his dad is at work, and his mom is weeding, I can see her out the window. There's a tree being trimmed somewhere nearby and I haven't had my morning coffee yet, but I did do my laundry and folded it all back to the small suitcase which I have packed my life into for the next year.

The phone is ringing, it says EVERGREEN HOSP. Chris's mom finally hears it, but it's already too late. She comes inside anyways. I left Santa Fe, NM about 12 days ago, coming to the west coast to spend a few weeks away from home before leaving the country, mostly visiting friends in San Francisco and Portland. I thought it would be nice to make the transition abroad a gradual one, where I could appreciate the actual transition, shedding my old routines and preparing to take on new ones.

I can't help but consider this the beginning of an odyssey, a perception I attribute to listening to an Of Montreal song one too many times. But really, I'm departing to an exotic, foreign land carrying just a suitcase and a wealth of recent goodbyes with nothing I have to go back to, and everything to look forward to.

Like blogging, I look forward to blogging.

My feet in a hot air balloon basket, looking down on Aurora, OR.