Here goes everything...

"Tell me everything."

Returning to the U.S. after eighteen months of exploring the other side of the world, finding a way to respond to this little phrase is possibly the most daunting challenge I've faced yet. It was the first thing my dear parents said to me when we settled into a post-flight feast at the 24-hour IHOP (notice I now only eat "International" pancakes, to reflect my worldliness), and has been a favored phrase of friends I've met up with since being back. I get it. I've probably even said it myself a few times. But really - do you want to know EVERYTHING? From the last EIGHTEEN months? It'd probably go a little something like this:

Monday, November 2nd, 2010: "I woke up around 9 am... or was it 9:15? No, no, it was definitely 9:30 because I was late for work that day. Anyway, I decided to wear the green dress to reflect my spunky mood..."

And so on. And so forth.

So, show of hands, who still wants to hear EVERYTHING? No one? Yeah. Didn't think so.

I'll save us all the time and boredom by doing what I do best: making a highlights reel. That way, you don't have to sit through "everything", only the things that have made the last year and a half such a memorable time for me.

Highlights of Thailand: learning to speak a language that I could never have anticipated being even somewhat useful to me, destroying my stomach with ultra-spicy, ultra-sketchy foods, making friends who were half my height, being lured into clothing shops by salespeople yelling "Madame! Don't worry! We have BIG SIZE for you!", sunsets over unimaginably gorgeous stretches of ocean and sand, realizing that riding an elephant is actually not as exciting as one might assume (those things move slooooow), falling in love in one of the most romantic places on earth, celebrating Christmas with a feast of green curry and basil pork, hiking to the top of seven stunning waterfalls, being able to recite the difference between the first, second, and third conditional tenses of the English language, and learning that life doesn't always have to be so darn serious.

Highlights of my travels around Southeast Asia: getting lost while hiking with my dad in Hong Kong and hopping on a double-decker bus to get back, randomly bumping into my cousin in the middle of a park in Ho Chi Minh City ("Hey, I think that white guy looks familiar..."), letting six year-old Hmong tribe villagers lead me down the slippery slopes of Sapa in Vietnam (and buying all their hand-made bracelets as a sign of my utter gratitude), spotting huge turtles while snorkeling off the coast of the Gilli Islands in Indonesia, taking a yoga class in Bali, taking ice-cold showers due to lack of hot water, sleeper trains and uncomfortably hot bus journeys across all sorts of terrain, cooking an egg with volcanic steam on the top of Mount Batur, the stars in an open field in Bali, the thick, sweet coffee in Vietnam, the Muslim prayer music blasting at all times on the Gilli Islands, the snorkeling off Tioman Island in Malaysia, playing cards for hours in Singapore because it was too expensive to do anything else.

I'm not sure if anyone even reads this old blog anymore, but if you are reading right now: I can't believe I did it all. Some of it was crazy, some of it was scary, but all of it was worth it. And that's just about everything I could have asked for.