As the sun sets in Bangalore, it's rising in a near but distant Portland.....

I think about how Portland is just waking up while I am just heading home in the dark in a rented tourist bus that the Bangalore Intel IDS team got for the Team outing event today. It is really weird....to think that the other side of the world is REALLY that different. I really can't compare Bangalore to Portland or to any other city in the States. But its so hard not to compare this new culture to what I am so used to back in home. I shouldn't and its unfair to. I have only been in Bangalore now for the last 16 hours and the amount of emotion I have gone through, I hope will be the toughest roller coaster ride of this year. I felt I had made a mistake and wondered what I had just put myself through for the next year. Was I really ready for this? I don't believe there is ever adequate preparation for decisions like this one and the most important thing that you have to have is the ability to accept, adapt, and stay sane regardless of how upside down your current environment is.

I wanted different and yes I got it. But was I truly ready for it? Maybe, maybe not. I don't think I could have done more to be prepared. I just really had to dive into it. India is very much alive. She is filled with irony and extremes of the opposite ends. Here, when you see something unusual you have to basically accept it when in other realities it just couldn't happen. So yes, cows do roam the streets as they wish. They are everywhere. They just hang out and sit there...walk around, stop traffic, hang out with other cows, moo at people, spend time at Hindu temples, and even hang out at the entrance to the freeway. Nope, its not BUMs hanging out with signs asking for money, its a cow with bells wishing you a safe journey before you get onto the ramp and speed drive like crazy.

This is definitely not a vacation.