American Dreams - 7

I became friends with Nanju through Tomoko. She is another lady who was really kind towards me after Alison and Carol. One day when I told her that I had to buy chocs and so was leaving early to walmart, she took me to costco , where you can buy things in bulk, but need to be a registeresd member there and helped me in shopping using her account. And in return I was supposed to get her just a hotdog :) . That lady was awesome and she s one reason why I am sitting here and writing this.During the last week of my stay, I was chosen as the “Guest of the week” at Hawthorns – I got a big gift pack from them – which had a nice letter and lot of goodies –cheese, sausage, cookies, popcorn, chocs, maple syrup,honey mustard spread and a scented candle. Hmm..I was touched. BTV was making me sad that I was leaving.

It was my last day in office. I was given a farewell lunch. I bid goodbye to the people in the office, and when I went to say bye to Nanju, she thrusted a pizaa into my hands and insisted that I should have it on my journey back to hotel. I felt my heart beating faster when I told goodbye to the cab driver. No more morning and evening calls to 'quick cab'..hmmm.

Alison insisted on having my last dinner in btv from her place. It was a very nice and elegant dinner , after which we went to Barnes and Nobles and spent some time there. They dropped me for the one last time at Hawthorns :(- bid goodbye and I didn’t have enough words to express how grateful I was and touched by their sweetness – They treated me like their relative and took care of me a lot. The word “thank you”, sometimes, never convey the meaning that we badly want it to.

My return journey was not that great.After settling the bills and other related stuff, I got ready to leave to airport , on sept 18. Hawthorns had complimentary airport drop. I was supposed to catch a flight from btv to JFK, from there to CDG, Paris, then to Bangalore. BTV flight was late by an hr, flight had some problems which they found out while we were in air, they said it s actually air traffic and the flight was taken down to Albania airport. We spend some 2 hours there and I was going to miss my flight from JFk by 1 hr. As expected, I missed the flight and delta was nt goin to give me a tkt to Paris in another flight. And I didn’t have any numbers of the IBM amex which organizes our travels.Thankfully, God was there with me in the form of Nanju, who urgently had a business trip to Korea and she appeared in front of me in the JFK airport. She was there with me throughout the arguments I had with delta. Finally I got the tkt for the next day, and delta provided me the stay in NY. I always wonder if she had not been there, I would have had the courage to argue with them. The next day, everything went fine and I reached Bangalore on 21^st morning. My heart was leaping with joy when the plane touched Bangalore- so happy to be back home. :)

For 2 months, it was more or less, a very luxurious life…but I always felt like I was in a golden cage…I realized that I would rather prefer to be in my own place, where I would feel absolutely home. :) But the trip brought about a lot of changes in me.. I guess I became lot more stronger in facing my life. I started accepting it as a challenge and I am happy today, to a greater sense than what I used to feel before. Life indeed is interesting.

Thanks once again to all the folks who made my trip truly memorable. :)