February 15, 2004
Leaving Italy was very difficult. Transitioning back into
a regular American life was harder. Its been 7 months
since I flew out of Fiumicino. I have a job. I have a roof
over my head. And yesterday, I succeeded in getting on
line with my old Toshiba computer to begin updating the
website again.
The bumps in the road have been myriad. There have
been interesting challenges (like buying my very first car) and hard adjustments (office work, for one thing). I told myself that I would approach life here the way I did in Italy -- with a fresh eye and an open mind. I've settled just outside the city of Philadelphia. Let's use "settled" loosely. I have been lucky enough to come into a couple of great house sitting gigs that are tiding me over until I actually "settle" into a house of my own. (Please pray, chant and daven that I have my own house by May.)
Since I have conquered my technological and logistical issues around internet access, I have no excuse to keep me from writing about my adventures here in the US... my life after Umbria.
I've already uploaded some stories recovered from my old computer. (Check Jan to May for some changes, with more to come over the next few weeks.) When my Toshiba crashed last February, the company I contacted to fix things told me that my hard drive had failed. No chance for recovering any data. That meant all my pictures and whatever journal stories were not loaded on the site, were wiped out. A distressing moment. The computer tech did not offer me my computer back after declaring it dead. Perhaps he had high hopes for resale of parts. I wrestled my Toshiba from his arms in the pathetic hope that a miracle would happen... sometime... later on. Maybe when Walt Disney is defrosted and Elvis re-enters the building.
As luck, or good karma, would have it, I got that miracle. A friend of mine on the west coast offered to look at the laptop when I got home. She resolved the problem in less than a week. There was no crashed hard drive, just some corrupted files that, once replaced, made everything fall back into place. My photos were recovered as well as a few stories from "the lost months".
Enjoy those, and I will keep working the last 11 months. For those of you who had been obsessively reading the adventures... a thousand thanks. I hope to provide you with a lot more material.
"Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes."
-- Jan Myrdal, The Silk Road, 1980
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2004 
