Monday, August 16, 2010

The Road Home

As always happens, a grand adventure comes to an end and Bali 2010 is complete.

I am in the Bangkok airport awaiting my flight at midnight to take me to Tokyo and then I am Chicago bound.  The road home will take about 23 hours and I arrive at about 10AM CST.

Bali 2010 may be in the record books but the memories will be lasting a lifetime.  Was it a good trip?  Definitely.  Did I accomplish what I had hoped to accomplish?  Yes.  Did I learn new things?  It would be impossible to interact with different cultures on a one to one basis and not learn new things.  I experienced and saw things that opened my eyes to the differences between our cultures.  It is important to keep an open mind about what you see and do to keep things in perspective.  What is normal and acceptable for one culture, may be shocking to another.  I will be writing about these experiences in the coming weeks.  We saw firsthand the celebration of cremation in the Balinese life cycle.  We saw firsthand animal sacrifice at one of the religious festivals.  Did I photograph these events?  Yes.  Will I publish all the photos from these events? No.

As with every trip that I have taken with Tewfic El-Sawy, there have been what I call "takeaways".  These are experiences that are special to me and will stay with me always.

I have a list of keyword memory joggers to help me recount everything that we did and saw.  It is a long list and every word has a special meaning and associated memory.  More on these later.

I will see if I can post a few photos from Tokyo.  I have a three hour layover.

It has been another great trip and now the road home has commenced.

Thanks for following my adventure.

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