I'm Still Alive

Hey everybody, by this point, most of you have probably stopped checking to see if I have posted anything new...and for those of you that haven't heard from me, you might be wondering if I met an untimely end in India. This is not the case, thank goodness!

After Malaysia, I did go to India. I flew into Mumbai, but for several important reasons, I was unable to stay more than a week in that incredible place known as India.

I promise that I will get an India post up here sometime soon...the little bit of the country I got to see was overwhelming to the point that even now, two months after I left India, I still haven't fully recovered from the flood of emotions and experiences I had there. I promise that when I feel ready to even try to scratch the surface of my experience there, and do so in a way that is fair to both myself and India, I will pour it out on here. I also promise that it should be very interesting to most of you... India still haunts me in so many ways and that should make for some good reading.

Anyway, after India, I had a short (18 hour) stop in London. I decided that it was about time I got back. I was running low on money and time, and I dreadfully missed my girlfriend, friends, and family. I figured that instead of trying to rush as much of Europe as I could into three weeks of always on the go travel, I would instead wait to do Europe for another 2 or 3 years. A three month trip through Europe is now being planned as another present to myself for when I graduate with my masters degree.

So I returned home. I first spent 3 weeks in Daytona Beach, Florida. These were some pretty strange times. For the first 5 days after my hurried homecoming, I woke up disoriented in the morning, not knowing where I was or whether or not I was in a dream... I don't know if anyone can relate to this...but it is terrifying. It also took some time for my body to come down off of the travel. I don't know if others have experienced this after a long time of this sort of trip, especially not having been in one place for longer than 10 days, but when combined with the fact that I was essentially moved out of my old place in Florida and I had a very large and drawn out move to Colorado coming up...I was pretty stressed and out of it down there.

So I returned to Pittsburgh. The day after my arrival, I was informed that my only first cousin on my father's side, Erin, had died after giving birth to a perfect angel of a baby. Kaytlinn, the perfect angel, is fine and being taken care of by my cousin's incredible husband and parents, my aunt and uncle. Anyway, I spent a week in Toronto and Niagara, Canada visiting family after this terrible twist of fate. If I can recommend anything at this point it would be this, if you love somebody, no matter who it is.. family.. friend.. lover...anything, then take whatever time out you can to see them or just talk to them because they (or even you) just might not be there tomorrow.

I returned once again to Pittsburgh and spent the next week hanging out with high school friends and my parents and sister. It was an awesome week!

The past two weeks I have been in Boston, Massachusetts for the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling annual summer school. My new advisor from Colorado wanted me to attend, and I'm sure glad I did. Boston was a blast and the other students were an awesome group! It was a great two weeks!

So now I get to move out to Colorado...but I'll keep this blog going for whoever is still going to check. It will still be based on travels. I'll update for my recent trips to Canada, Pittsburgh, Boston and (maybe) Daytona too. And India will definitely get in there when I feel that I'm ready to tackle that. As for future posts, I plan on doing a good deal of travel within Colorado while I'm there as well as some good, long road trips throughout the Western USA and Canada. So I should have plenty of new pictures to keep you all checking in for.

For those that actually read all of this, thank you! I hope you thouroughly enjoy this blog. I hope even more that it sparks some interest in just getting out there to see this amazing world we live on...it's a beautiful place in so many ways! Enjoy!