Sending Nikki Home Early

Yep, that's right. It looks like I'm getting shipped back stateside a full month earlier than anticipated … and I gotta admit I'm having really mixed feelings about it.

I'm coming home for really exciting reasons. As you may know, I'll be starting at University of Michigan in the fall and well, coming home in August didn't really leave us enough time to work out housing in MI and what the hell we were gonna do with our apartment in Brooklyn. I'm coming home early - ostensibly - to help smooth our transition: figure out housing, possibly buy a used car, get working on preparing our apartment for sale, etc.

The side bonus of coming home early is that I get to see family and friends a lot sooner than anticipated. Hopefully my time home won't only be work work work. Instead of sorting things out in a manic pace, I may even have company to help me figure it all out. Road trip anyone?

That said, while certainly my reasons for going home are extremely exciting, I'm sad that my time in India will be cut short - especially since Allen and I are in a place that is beyond a little slice of heaven. Yes, he's up here getting some good work done on his thesis … but even so, our time is spent so peacefully. We wake up leisurely in the morning. We go for amazing walks through the mountains - using the sun to warm ourselves up. I mean, for crying out loud it was 47 degrees Celsius in Delhi the other day and we were up here thinking of lighting the bukhare (fire) because it was so chilly at night! I'm not going to look forward to leaving Allen and this little mountain retreat.

So I'm torn. I've got good things to look forward to on both sides of this trip, so it makes it hard to choose.

But for all my peeps in NYC - I'll be home approximately June 13th and will be in the NJ area until the beginning of September (with a retreat to MI and NC sometime in between). If you are around and want to see me --- TELL ME WHEN I CAN COME VISIT YOU!

So excited to see you all!

Living in the clouds... ilterally

Where do I begin? Gosh, I feel like so much has been going on since I last posted... Allen's up in Mussoorie now and is beginning to write his thesis (I know!). We're planning our fall, despite our intermittent internet access (where will we live? how will we buy a car? what do we do about Brooklyn?). And we're enjoying the mountains and the variable weather we get ... weather that is not above 100 degrees, thankfully.

I thought I would share some of the photos I've taken of living up in the clouds. I wish I was better at taking pictures of the Himalayas - they really are unbelievably big and my pictures do them poor justice.