Home again

I am home again! Well, back in Japan at least :-) And let me say, this place is weeeiiiirrd after being in India....

I have so much to write about and so many photos to share (upwards of 400, eegads!), but for now I am keeping it short due to extreme exhaustion!!!

At this point, I have pretty much been up for 3 days straight, with the exception of 1-2 hour naps stolen on trains, planes and buses. We headed out to the village for the last time on January 3rd, did a half day of building, then had a tearful but joyful goodbye to all our new friends of the KI village. Then it was back to the hotel for packing and last minute shopping in Kavali before loading up the bus by 7 p.m. We dropped 4 people off at the train station around 9, then drove through the night to Chennai. We said goodbye to another part of the group at the Chennai Salvation Army guest house around 2 am, and continued on to the airport where the remaining 6 people spent the rest of the night waiting for our 6 am flight back to Delhi. We had some time to kill before our flight back to Japan, so we did some shopping in the local craft market and then tried to grab a few winks at the airport. An 8 hour overnight flight back to Tokyo put us in Japan around 9 this morning, and I finally walked in my door about 4 this afternoon. What a friggin' long journey!

Just for fun, here is the list of various forms of transportation I have used in my journey home, in chronological order: bus (4 hours), plane (2 hours), taxi (30 minutes), motor rickshaw (30 minutes), plane (8 hours), train (1 hour), subway (15 minutes), Shinkansen (1 hour), train (30 minutes), walking (40 minutes), and one more bus (45 minutes). Behold the wonders of modern transportation! I am probably on my 9th or 10th wind by now, and my body has pretty much given up on fighting me and resolved itself to being awake until I decide it is time to go to bed.

And on that note, I think 8 pm is reasonable bedtime given the circumstances!!! Sweet sleep in a real bed, here I come!