So, without further ado, I'm home.
Reached Wednesday at 11:45pm in the familiar Frontier Airlines baggage carousel. Had an uneventful ride ALL the way home, meaning even from the moment of pulling out of the driveway in Kerala - and if you haven't been able to tell from previous posts, few drives in Kerala are uneventful. But apparently they saved the best for last, and we wound our way back down out of the golden hills and rubber estates of Kottayam district towards the airport without incident. Shed a few tears, but had to collect myself in order to take a photo of the huge "AMALA BHARAT GAS - Cook Food Serve Love" sign that is painted on a building just around our corner of the KK road. (good friends of ours have a shweetie baby named Amala)
Mummy fell asleep on the drive, and I stared out the window trying to recognize anything from the first drive back from the airport that had brought me home back in November. We were retracing that route, and it was a road that we never had been down since I had come there. I remembered it seeming very small coming in... but now it was just another road, same size as all the others I had come to know.
I started taking pictures out the window with the flash, but stopped when the driver flipped his side mirror out at the exact angle to give me a steely death stare.
Reached Cochin Airport (which is actually in another city, Amalagam or something like that... Amalgany? Angary? There's an A and a Y in there somewhere) and packed my two 52 lb bags onto a trolley. Knowing I had the potential to stand there and bawl for hours if given the opportunity, Mummy and Daddy both bravely said "okay! safe trip!" and we hugged, I kissed them both, said I'd see them in a year, and headed tearfully off to run though the airports hoops that would eventually get me on board a plane headed towards the U.S.
One neat-o thing about the airport... it's always cool to see "white" people again :-) Usually you're bound to see a few... more often than not hip Europeans, Brits, or Californians that seem to be on family vacation. There will be a chic granny type in capris, with hair that she's proudly let go gray and reading glasses on a chain, and following her will be a 12 year old who is probably thrilled to get back to cheeseburgers, but sad to go back to having to wear his seatbelt in his home country. There'll be a balding dad who looks lost and always a younger, more sunburned version of granny as his wife.
On my three occasions at the airport, none of my honky brethren have ever made eye contact with me. Bloody fellows ;-)
Whereas, when we dropped Saby off to the airport, I had the ultimate pleasure of properly earning OMS (open mouth stares) as opposed to just getting them for being a firenge (foreigner). Our little farewell committee was myself, cousin Vinod and his "awezzum" wife Cynthia. Saby was stressed about clearing security in proper time for his flight, and he was getting noticeably anxious as we stood there now waiting for Anil, the driver, to return with some ibuprofen... as Vinod, before leaving the house, had accidentally shut the end of Saby's ring finger in the hatch of the SUV.
(When the hatch slammed shut and Saby screamed, I had thought he was joking... but poor Vinod said the image of his finger and the door coming down on it was stuck in his head)
So the time comes to go, and he gives us all a hug and tries to walk off. Lame! I scampered after him, grabbed his hand and hammed my best kissy-kissy face saying, "Come on... make a scene with me." He shoo'ed me away like I was a street kid asking for rupees. So I grabbed him and pulled him down for a wet one... which I think the crowd of Indians behind us appreciated more than he did. Their giggles and smiles (and OMS) lasted until long after he had disappeared into the airport.
Saby flew back Cochin to Dubai (United Arab Emirates), had a 13 hour stop and hotel room in Dubai, and then went London Gatwick directly back to Cincinnatti. He says Dubai is amazing, and has sung the praises of Air Emirates endlessly.
My flight route was Cochin to Singapore, a brief 2 hours there and then off to Japan for fuel and food to get us across the Pacific to Los Angeles. From there I would be flying domestically on Frontier (our favorite, hubbed in Denver - they have a super frequent flyer program!!) to Denver and finally Detroit.
I was blessed with a seat in the 5th row on my first leg, only to find it wouldn't recline because the exit row was behind us. The two computer engineers on either side of me were headed back to their jobs in Singapore after their first year of work abroad, and were intent on getting loaded with the excuse that it would "help sleep." I worried what damage two lightweights from Calicut could do on a 4 hour flight, but all ended well, especially after our conversation:
Computer Engineer: Did you enjoy India?
Me: Oh yes, Kerala is beautiful.
CE: For how long you are here?
Me: Forty days.
CE: (dismissively) Oh, four days.
Me: No, four-teeeee.
CE: (more impressed) Ahh, fourteen!
Me: NO. Forty. Four-zero. Forty.
CE:(looking shocked) Oh my God, what for?!?
Then I got to drop the "visiting my in-laws and family" which is my favorite secret code for "I'm married, and what's more I'm married to a Mallu and he's much bigger than you, so don't hit on me or he'll kick your scrawny programmin' ass."
Singapore passed by without much fanfare, although I did buy 27 Sing dollars worth of Tiger Balm and Brit export Thera-Flu in a pharmacy to battle the cold I felt coming on, plus Melatonin to counter jet lag. Since leaving India my watch had been set to Eastern Time and I was determined to only sleep at appropriate times. And sleep I did... slept through takeoff from Singapore and woke up only for food. Mmmmm, food.
My flight was apparently the birth control flight. I was packed into the back section with what seemed like hundreds of spoiled Indian babies and belligerent, equally spoiled ABCD adolescents. (ABCD being the less than complimentary anagram "American Born Confused Desi", with Desi meaning Indian) The babies cried, the children whined and yelled and fought, and the adolescents all told their parents to "shut UP!" straight through our stop in Japan and back over the big blue ocean. I disembarked in LAX vowing to never have children.
In LAX I had already been flying some 27 hours and was totally confused as to where I was... and almost missed my flight while I sat in a Burger King talking to my hubby on the phone. (I wanted to smell fast food, but wasn't brave enough to eat any of it yet).
In the mile-high city I bought some peanut M&Ms and a new Sudoku book, mostly because I needed an excuse to get up and move far far away from the girl telling whoever was on the other end of her cell phone that "yeah, he stayed over last night and in the morning, he was like telling me, 'I have strep.' So now, like, I'm all paranoid, and my throat feels all like, junky and stuff..." AHHHHHHHHH!
Strep free I reach Detroit. Cold as hell, it is... get picked up by Windo and deposited in the humble and empty abode of Rams and Lalee, who are currently still in India, and that's where I've been ever since. The last human being I saw in person was Windo around 1:15 a.m. on Thursday morning - since then, I feel like I'm in some sort of decompression chamber or quarantine. But it's been nice... rather than being flung back into the good ol' American hustle and bustle, I've been sleeping lots, listening to Malayalam film songs on my iPod shuffle, doing sudoku, and prowling around their house hunting for things to eat. (Rams and Lalee, let me replace the Maggi noodles, parathas, and oh-so-tasty crackers on top of the fridge before you return)
Today, actually in about an hour, Saby should be back from Dayton, and we'll be having lunch with Liz and Matt and then Sunday is our big moving day down to Dayton. Technically, we still don't have a place to move into, but that should be settled by 9:30 am on Monday morning.
I'll be writing more in retrospect as I get time... but to anybody who actually has been reading this stuff up til now, THANKS.
See you on da flip side...
