Updates

College life on an actual college campus has brought be back to the "real world", I suppose. Part of my mind always goes back to the experiences I gained while abroad, and I'll never forget what I learned.

Maybe one day I'll get to finish the blog about Panama, but time for now is definitely a limiting factor. During the second half of the trip, we went up to a Banana plantation, where I learned that a huge percentage of banana's are thrown away because they aren't the perfect size, or are the extra seventh in a bunch that is supposed to be six. All those banana's gone to waste... it makes me wonder how many people would suffer less if those banana's could somehow get transported to the hungry...

We also went to Costa Rica to Earth University, an entire university (headed by Kellogg based on sustainable agriculture. The students work the entire school: the organic farms, the castration of the piglets... everything. We stayed in extremely nice cabins and got to tour the school to see what they do. I actually met a Japanese professor there; unfortunately, most my Japanese had already escaped me.

We stayed with a homestay in La Argentina in Costa Rica. I met some people from a CR program staying with the same family, and we ended up taking a hike and swimming in the mountain river... very refreshing. There I had a pet ocelot (jaguar-like cat), a cat, and a couple birds. Needless to say I was very happy with my stay.

We spent a week in Bocas del Toro doing a Marine Biology course. This had to be one of my favorites. We stayed at the Smithsonian cabins, had internet, and were out on the clearest waters for 4-5 hours each day. And we had a private chef who was quite good in the kitchen. Yum. It was there we watched the elections... Hurrah Obama!

I'm beginning to realize that there is so much more to the rest of this trip that I cannot afford to capture in just a few paragraphs. I will come back and finish it one day. I learned more about myself in those last months than in the rest of the trip. It deserves to be done justice.

Until then, I find it wise to continue blogging, if not for an audience, than for myself. I quickly found myself blanking on details... soon I might forget the emotions I had at each place.. and even quicker as I enter med school and the future, I may begin to view this period in my life as just one event of many.

I will say one thing though. Time passed quicker in the States. I went every week for 7 months without a real routine. Each day was long and pressing... yet exciting. I was exhausted from sun up to sundown... but life passed by slower. Coming back, I felt I hadn't seen some people, or experience some flavors in years... people were confused why I felt this way.. it wasn't even a year, right?

Time is relative. Half of the semester has gone by, and I don't even feel like it has really started yet. That's two months in. Two months in the Japan trip and I was almost done. In my life I want to live for a long time, not in the sense of second, minutes, hours... but time in the sense of always learning and experiencing. Life should pass me like my two months in Japan, not the two months that have just gone by, that I've barely gotten to know.

Welcome home, Tim.