My Final Post

"Put it in the books", they say. This day is finally here. A day that seemed years away when looking at it way back in January or Febuary or April. This is the day my adventure comes to a close. I can't describe the kinds of emotions running though me, so many mixed feelings of happiness, sadness, excitement, blah, blah, blah. It's been 147 days, 21 weeks, and maybe I'm just getting old, but the time seemed to whiz by. The days were never short, but when I look back at everything, it seems just a few weeks ago I stepped out of Grandma's apartment into a snow storm trying to hail a cab for the airport, praying my flight wasn't going to be delayed.

This trip was a necessity for me... I needed to do it before I hit the "real world". This wasn't a long vacation or a kid traveling with a backpack on... this was so much more. I've always said that I've learned more from traveling than I have in any classroom, and this trip certainly followed suit. For starters, I learned alot about myself: being placed in all kinds of situations extremely new and foreign to me enabled me to rely on different skills I never knew I had, and/or didn't have and had to acquire. I learned alot about relationships and people: in short, we all speak that same universal language. I learned alot about perpsective: being around so many different people from all over the world really shed different kinds of light on things I knew and didn't know about. And, of course, there are countless other things, however, I'll keep some of them to myself.

I return home feeling quite different about myself. I feel ready, I feel uplifted, I feel things I can't really put into words. To say the least, I return home a much improved version of the Max that left in late January.

I can't believe the kinds of things I've been able to do! I've experience two religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, I've climbed mountains and got lost in volcanoes, seen centuries old temples, swam in some of the world's most beautiful waters, motorbiked throughout countries, and ate foods that don't look anything like food.

I've come to realize that the places I went to were great, the things I saw were special, but if you were to take away the wonderful people I experienced these things with, all of these places just don't mean as much to me. It's the faces, the different lives, the seperate stories that I will carry with me forever. I've met all kinds of people on this journey. Some I travelled with for three weeks, some for three days, some I hung with for three hours, and some I talked to for only three minutes. But everyone touched me in some way, regardless of how long I was with them.

I look forward to the next chapter of my life. While this colorful and memorable chapter comes to a close, it will be one that I'll refer to in future chapters. This is an ongoing journey, and it's shape will soon take new form.

To my family, thank you so much for enabling me and encouraging me to embark on such a special adventure, it obviously could not have been accomplished without the love and support of all of you. To my friends, thanks so much for doing a great job of keeping me in the loop and staying in touch while I've been away, I've come to value our relationships very much since I've been gone. To the people I know through other aspects of my life, thank you for taking the time to read up and shoot me a kind note. And to my new friends... all I can say is, I hope to have touched your lives the way you have touched mine.

So to all of you, as tears fill my eyes while I write, thank you for making these last five months a special piece of my personal history that will accompany me with every year that follows.

I'm coming home, and my heart is full... my heart is full.