Closure to an Indescribable Adventure. Transition to a New Life.

I never got to spend enough time writing about my last days and months in Indonesia. Living life was my number one priority during those final moments, and in many ways, it all seems like a dream now. I awoke after a 2-year fantasy and a 50 hour journey from Medan to Mayfield in my home town in Western, KY. Some things had changed, but not a disorienting amount. Arriving back so suddenly wasn't a startling realization of reality -- but more of a thought-provoking, mystical feeling that's left me to unravel and piece together all that I experienced during a chimeric exodus to South East Asia.

I've been back for about a month and a half now, and I've already met with a number of old friends. My memories of them from up to two summers ago are still as clear as day, and I greeted them as if we had all just graduated together only weeks before. But people here, who's lives had been continuing at a similarly unrelenting pace, saw me instantly back in their lives after 22 months of absence. It's nice to say that friendships don't die easily, and very little, if anything, had been lost between all of us. Nevertheless, seeing everyone still seemed overwhelmingly surreal.

It just so happens, however, that everything that occurred during my life on Java and Sumatra was not a dream at all, and I can remember entire days, even run through the course of a random week, a month, etc. I can look at my experience from a number of different perspectives and angles, and I can understand many different past and future consequences of my time there. It's not a fight to recall the climax, and I didn't wake up before it was over. I left with an astonishing amount of closure, life long friends, the ability to speak a new language, and a clear direction for my career and future. I closed one door, a door to the past, one that is shut any time you experience anything. But I've opened a hundred more, and I can always take a moment to step back and look through the windows that still show a vast panorama of a time that I'm never going to forget.

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There's still much to be shared about what happened in Indonesia, and while some of it will inevitably stay in Indonesia (by my judgment to extend it to you or not), I'll continue to draw on my experiences. However, it's going to be in a different form. I'll probably not have entire posts dedicated to humorous batak anecdotes anymore, but they'll be embedded in new narratives and accounts of my life, which is about to take a drastic turn in a direction that only my time in Boston will give a destination.

That's why I'm happy to unveil a new blog: "Bostoken: Life in Boston"

And you can find it at bostoken.blogspot.com

Please continue to enjoy!