Six Weeks Down, Four to Go

It is amazing to think that my trip has passed as quickly as it has. Six weeks are gone and all of my travel friends from BYU are back in the states getting back to work and moving on with their summer. So far the trip has been great. Mackenzie leaving early and the iPod/computer troubles were low-lights, but on the whole things have gone amazingly well. My bags have always arrived where they needed to be, all of the hotel/car reservations worked out (internet is amazing), my health has been great, I’ve been able to see all of my friends I wanted to (like Benji in the Philippines, see picture) and successfully encouraged a couple to go back to Church, and have seen all kinds of amazing sights. Honestly, I am a little tired of being a tourist and moving hotels every couple of days, but still love the trip on the whole and especially seeing old friends.
One of the nice things about these last four weeks is that I am relatively stable. Two weeks will be spent in Sri Lanka, the first touristing with David and his family, and the second volunteering at his work. The following ten days I will be in India visiting a friend from BYU and the service camp she helps run. We will spend about 5 days in Chennai and another 5 in New Delhi (I am way excited to see the Taj Mahal). On the way back home I spend 2 days in Sri Lanka saying goodbye and then 2 days in Hong Kong seeing old friends. Finally, on July 11th I arrive back in Arizona and will be heading to a nice Mexican restaurant. So far on the trip I’ve taken roughly 1500 pictures and used about 9 gigabytes of memory. The last time I checked Brandon Seiter had the only guess on my distance travel so he might be the winner, we’ll see. One lesson I’ve learned from the trip is that I probably don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Asia. It was nice to learn before I would try anything crazy like that. The good old United States are where it’s at for me, specifically Arizona I hope.