Traveling

Traveling is expensive.

Traveling is time-consuming.

Traveling is fucking exhausting.

All of these I had anticipated. And after three weeks I can safely confirm that they are 100% true. But here are some other things I was pleasantly surprised to find whilst embarking on my adventures on the road/in the sky:

Flights are not bad as long as you have something to do on them and are looking forward to it. In fact, they can be quite relaxing if you are sitting in a comfortable seat (often times I get bumped up to Economy Plus on flights where those seats do not fill up) and have a novel to read, an album to explore, or some serious zzz's to catch. Lately I have been plunking down with my copy of Midnight's Children (still on this one, though I have made some serious headway) and plugging in my earphones (currently obsessed with Deerhunter's Microcastle. SO GOOD AH). When my eyes get tired of reading I usually take a nap or stare out the window if there are clear skies and interesting views of the land/horizon below.

Along the same lines, packing is not nearly as bad as I'd anticipated - as long as I have a checklist (either mental or physical) of the things I need to bring, it's usually a speedy and productive process. It forces me to be lean, practical, and organized about all my stuff. It also helps that I picked out a suitcase that I adore!

Taxi drivers are usually really, really interesting. For one thing, they are incredibly diverse and come from all sorts of backgrounds. For another, they know tons and tons more than you do about your city. And to top it off, most of them are really engaging folks who have open ears and would like nothing more than to share their stories with you. Sometimes I feel trapped in a social/work circle of professionals and students who all have tons of work and take themselves very seriously and stress out 24/7. It is nice to engage in a different sort of conversation and to see the world from another perspective.

Staying in touch, c'est difficile! It really does take effort and time and motivation to make sure I do not fall completely out of my friends' lives five days a week. But I have found that putting time into friendships and family is always worth it. Similarly, being away makes coming back that  much more special - I now find that my weekends are much more busy/adventurous and that I am so much more glad for my room/friends/bed when I am deprived of them!

And perhaps, most importantly of all:

There are kind, funny, gracious, and smart people everywhere. You just have to try a little and usually you will see the brighter side of people. I am not usually one for talking to strangers - usually I am earplugged into my own little world - but I have found that beneath everybody's perhaps exhausted, perhaps grumpy, perhaps lonely expressions is just the desire to be happy and appreciated and respected. This is especially true of people who work at airports who have to deal with so many people who simply see them as invisible or annoying barriers - although I do not like how sometimes they are rude, I also find it hard to blame them for their unpleasant demeanor because I could probably not last a week in their roles. Often times a small smile or a subtle gesture of appreciation can produce wonderful results.

This past weekend at O'Hare, the security line was horrendously sluggish (tell me something I don't know...) to the point where the people waiting to get their passports and boarding passes checked in the previous line were all immobile, standing around the equally-bored looking TSA checkers at their stands. I was happily listening to the Beatles on my Pre and I guess I must have been tapping my feet or bopping along a bit too much because before I knew it, the elderly TSA Passport-checker had gotten up from his seat and was dancing next to me, hands in the ai-yar and all, and everyone around us was laughing because it took me a few seconds to notice what was going on. He asked me what I was listening to and I pulled out the earphones from my phone and "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" started to play, so we started to dance together like idiots. (I was waving my phone in one hand, clutching my passport in the other). And then - get this - the guy behind me started singing along to the song. He had an awesome booming voice and some people started to clap and join in. So just imagine, a small Asian girl dancing with an old black guy and a huge lumberjack-lookin' guy belting out the Beatles while a small crowd of middle-aged onlookers with suitcases laughed and clapped along. I kid you not, this actually happened. It was such a Lifetime movie moment. And it rocked.