Snippets

This last week is full of infinite things to do, of impossible deadlines, of chaos, of the sense of loss settling in slowly. It means realizing that I have friends here, a life that I will be leaving. Just as I had started to settle in, feel at home (and this hotel has become home in many ways), I must leave. On every walk, every trip someplace, I am mentally making lists of everything that I want to remember, that I want in etched in my memory. As the number of days reduces, the list of goodbyes grows longer. There are so many daily mysteries that are still unsolved (for example the four sets of traffic light of different sizes and at different heights at each crossing). I haven't taken all the walks I wanted to, I haven't explored as much as I wanted to, I haven't done all the things I now know I would have liked too. This too, I know is part of the experience, making peace with the discontent at all that is left unexplored, accepting my own limits. But what I have from this experience is so much, it parallels nothing in my life. It hasn't only been an academic or professional experience, it has been much more. I am not wont to romanticize places; every place has something going for it (and not). But Hue city, Vietnam has been incredibly kind.