Going Home
Salut, Happy New Year! The target audience for this blog is generally undefined, but the major readers are, I presume, usually family and friends back home. As such, considering this post is about me being home, it may feel like some retreaded ground. This is my 38th (!!) blog post; that’s crazy. For anyone who has traveled cross continentally, or even just flown across the Atlantic, you can relate to how difficult and agonizing it can be and just how exhausting it is. When I first made the trip to Kyrgyzstan, I was alongside a ragtag group of people I barely knew anything about, but I was with people. Doing it alone is hard and mind-numbing. The route I took to get home, involved a drive to Jalal-Abad city, a 2-hour marshrutka to Osh city, a taxi to the airport, a 30-minute flight to Bishkek, a 7-hour night layover at the Bishkek airport, then a 5.5-hour flight to Istanbul, an 8-hour layover in that airport, and then a 13-hour flight to Houston, then a drive home. Coming ba...