A road taken...

Its been ages since I last penned my thoughts. Many things have happened since, many changes in my life, many new friends and stories, many insights into life and survival. All these have served to enrich and make me a better person. While starting this second semester as a graduate student, I look back upon the one just gone by and reminisce...
Three credits and a seminar take their toll. I am initiated into the rigorous world of weekly homeworks and assignments. All nighters and midnight pizzas and Ramen. At the same time, the cutting edge stuff taught by gifted professors enthuses me, reawakens an excitement at the unique opportunity I have to contribute my tithe to this fast changing technological world. I attend classes week after week. Also, curious, I explore the culture of day-to-day life in the United States. Fast food, Walmart, Friday night parties, the Monday morning commute, socials, coffee hours, movies and restaurants in downtown, apple pies at Applebees, Interstates and expressways. And most of all the average American student , who is also, it gradually dawned, a human being just like the ones in Indian cities, but a much better one maybe? He is polite, well behaved, obeys the traffic rules, jaywalks at times, struts around with his iPods and MacBooks, wears the same brands like Columbia, Northface and Old Navy, is a fitness freak who jogs all the time, is helpful and humorous, appreciates the arts, reads serious fiction all the time in buses and planes, spends the Fridays in the campus pub cheering on his favourite football team, and is fiercely independent. Then I went on a road trip to Duluth on Lake Superior and a tour of the Windy City, Chicago. Completed a satisfying optimization project. Learnt to cook by trial and error, more of the latter though. Made really wonderful new friends and spent ages chatting and seeing movies with them. Went for walks along the Mississippi river flats and a few of the lakes in this Land of 10,000 lakes. Experienced my first snowfall, ethereal flakes drifting down in divine harmony. Sledding and bowling. Spent hours wasting time in Starbucks. Sampled Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Mediterranean and American cuisine. All in all I had a eventful fun semester. And now back to the next one.