Ah, America

I recently had the pleasure(?) of returning Stateside for a few weeks at the end of August/early September. My trip was a bit of a whirlwind tour, including San Francisco, San Diego, New York and Chicago, so it will likely take a few posts to really get through it all.

But first things, first. I arrived in San Francisco on August 28 and duly headed straight for Mountain View, where, rather than looking for a job at Google, I desperately searched the streets for a pay phone while carrying all my stuff and wondered if I had really left Asia, since most of the storefront signs were in Chinese.

A lack of working pay phones led me to the offices where my old and good friend, Nandita, works. I know Nandita from a TESOL certificate program we both took in Zhuhai, China, in January 2003 (in fact, she and I took a little side trip to Hong Kong at the time of the SARS breakout - we both survived).

Nandita has traded in an exciting life as an ESL teacher to stay in Mountain View with her beau, Boris. But luckily they do still get out and travel the world together - in fact, he just took her home with him to Bulgaria to meet his family. I look forward to seeing you again next year, Nandita!