On the Home Front

warning: this entry has no logical order...
It's Friday, I got home on Wednesday night. It's nice, but I can't lie, I really miss India and it makes me sad to think I have no idea when I'll go back or how being there can play into my future (luckily I have no clue what's next for me after college, so there's always hope!) Last night my dad asked me to make dinner because we were having a guest over...so I jumped on the opportunity to make Indian food! I only made it one day...not even 24 hours in Nebraska before I was cooking and eating Indian food; I just don't want American food. I got a Cinnabon when I was waiting in O'Hare for my next flight because it's my traditional airport food...but I didn't even enjoy it very much or finish it, which is unprecedented in my airport-Cinnabon eating career!
Early Wednesday (to be more specific 12 am) morning Kritika and her parents drove me to the airport and said good bye...and I walked into my portal out of India. I was surprised to find the bathrooms in Indira Gandhi International Airport to be sparkling clean, smelling good (not just neutral!), and with toilet paper. That was a good thing, but it made me feel like I'd left India already. The last week in Delhi I finally adjusted to the India way of using the toilet, which is a spray thing on the back of the rim of the toilet instead of toilet paper, and I missed it as I entered the western world again (it's really so much cleaner!) The thing that struck me about the really nice bathroom was that Delhi is changing and so is India and I'm a little after that if I wait to long to go back it will not be Delhi anymore, and I'm a little afraid that sooner or later there will be no solid escape from the Western world. I wrote a paper on Delhi's plans for preparation for hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games, which is like the Olympics for countries that used to be part of the British Empire. There are sooo many modernizing plans, which is good. I mean, it's good to have trashcans on the streets because those don't exist now (I carried around trash for many hours on a regular basis despite the encouragement of Indians to liter on their streets...because someone has a job by picking up this trash and what will happen to them if nobody liters?) It's good that the Metro is expanding across the city, but is this great expenditure to serve the upper class ok in the face of desperate poverty? Does modernization just mean further marginalization and mistreatment of the poorest people because if it does I don't want Delhi to get any more modern. There's no easy answer though and for some reason I'm sure Delhi will always be something complete contrary to what I'm used to in the US. I have hope that God is too good to let all diversity fade away into one bland world.
So getting home. Snow! yay! Cold...cold. Yeah. On the plane I winced at the idea of getting chicken casserole and asked for the veg dish because I've gotten so accustomed to eating veg and in India generally find it tastier, but I was now traveling London-Chicago and there veg food meant nasty white pasta in cheese. What a tragedy! I remembered why I eat meat here.
Seeing Mom and Dad was great, no doubt about that. And seeing my friends is just very =)
When I got home Wednesday night my mom flicked the light on by accident and I immediately said "ah! the electricity is out!" to which my mom responded by flipping another switch on and the lights that brightened highlighted for me that I was no longer in India. The amount of water in our toilets freaked me out at first. Taking a shower in my shower that has very, very high water pressure made me feel more gulity and hectic to get out of there and turn off the water than soothed by its warmth. The tea I attempted to make was no chai. The Christmas cookies are good though, some things don't change.