The Artful Nomad: 2014

The only food I missed while gone those 10 months was thai food and more particularly, red curry is what came to mind - I have now had curry about 6 times, so I must absolutely be back in the states. Who ever thought that red curry consumption would be the mark of my return, but sometimes things defy reason.

I am back in the USA and looking ahead to a high energy year of modeling this 2014. I had a difficult time figuring out when to fly back to the states as I continually had changes in heart about staying or going, and where I would be flying from and how much was logical to spend on a plane to get back to our country, but in the end I decided before Christmas was most appropriate for my return. I had a feeling too much more time in the sun would lead to unacceptable tan lines, and that starting off the year of 2014 back in the US might be a good idea. I ended up not traveling and visiting the coast of Ecuador, which would have had me gradually moving north back to Quito for my plane, so the week before my flight I boarded a series of buses over two days, quickly getting north via 37 hours of bus over two days. A few days later, less than 6 hours on a plane would transport me from my South American adventure, back to the United States.

For the first few weeks, unbeknownst to me, I was speaking with a partial cadence of a spanish speaker, and forgetting words in English. I had to search my word-bank for the word for "company," when "empresa" was what came to mind, or instead of being able to say "after," the word "después"is what came to mind. By now, I speak normally and only have an occasional need to slow down my speech, as interestingly my stories about South America are so tied to the spanish language that my mind clicks over to that upon the telling of them, but yet if I tell modeling stories from before or after my trip, I have absolutely no problem. I am pretty sure this means I learned the language adequately well, as much as I know I have much to improve.

This year I will try to write with some sort of frequency as I have realized that I do rather limited writing for someone who enjoys the process of putting thoughts into sentences.