Gracias

As I sit at the computer in the semi-swank hotel in Sydney, I am not much interested in retrieving emails. Oh wait, that's because I don't have any new ones. Okay, I had a couple and I didn't respond. Whatever. I have really important things to do at this second, like listening in on the American in the lobby battling through shoddy phone circuits to wish her parents and random cousins a happy thanksgiving. Someone, apparently, didn't like the tofurkey. Someone else was upset about an uninvited guest appearing. She talked with her mother about the weather here; it's a bit dreary today. And then she filled her family in on her own thanksgiving festivities, something that I never even considered pursuing from overseas. This woman, screaming in her twangy American, actually went to an American pub last night to eat turkey and stuffing and cranberry goo molded into the shape of a lead-tainted can. I suppose she reminded me that I might be a bit more thankful, even if I don't want to torture myself, I mean, indulge, in what could be the worst culinary fare of the year.

So, thanks be to this universe for allowing me this wonderful earth to explore, and wonderful people to love, and family to hold me and friends to laugh at me. I am looking forward to coming home in December, but I also am forever grateful to have had this chance to look around a little in this southern hemisphere, to see new things, to try to habits. I also want to say thanks for the chance to see a porcupine. He really did look like a giant pincushion.