journal entry: may 31, 2008

Travel day.  We started out from Gainesville at 7:00am, I'd gotten up at 5:00am after maybe 2 hours of sleep.  Immediately Swami K, Kite and I started chatting about the things we packed and course readings we were suppose to do.  Apparently Columbia changed the syllabus and didn't let any of us know, Swami K found out through Berkley.  Whatever.  I finished everything that had been posted on the class web page, so no matter what was required or recommended, it wall all finished.  We went to pick up the Cameraman, and it was crazy.  Perhaps because I'd had no sleep and no coffee, but I felt awkward and uncomfortable about meeting new people.  Needless to say we could not get everything in Kite's Toyota Camry, which I predicted, and he had to drive separately.  Overall the Cameraman makes me slightly uncomfortable.  It doesn't help that every time I sit down to read or close my eyes in attempts to sleep he's got the camera in my face.  We'll see how this goes.

The first flight from Jacksonville to Newark was on the tiniest plane I've ever been on and was simply awful.  I couldn't do anything because I was so nauseated.  Actually that was the general consensus when we all got off.  We all seemed to feel better once we found some food in the airport.  Vegetarian nachos.  As last hurrah!  We spent the meal talking about how I was probably the most prepared and well packed.  Wonderful compliment.  Go me.  Thank you Erin!  I was dubbed the "mobile pharmacy" or "drug mule".  I personally prefer 'drug mule'.  Quite hilarious.  

I spent our 4 hour layover looking out the window of the Newark airport at the Manhattan skyline.  I found it rather interesting; the pinnacle of what I define as capitalist, Western society.  Interesting it's the last thing in the US that I'd see before beginning the comparative analysis that will be my adventure.  The first of many contrasts between East and West.  A first glimpse of the dichotomies and inequalities which are soon to be blinding.

-----

Plane:  I'm so drunk on lack of sleep that I feel like I'm horribly hung over and there is a small man sitting on my chest.  I can't sleep.  I can't think.  I can't do anything except sit and stare at the screen ahead of me.  I'm not even really watching it, just spacing out.  7 hours left.  Half way through.  I still don't really believe that I'm going to India.  I still feel like I'll end up somewhere else, like Michigan.  India isn't real yet.  I wonder if it will even seem real when I get there.  Just wait and see...