One of the few advantages of switching to a time zone ten and a half hours off from your own is that your body occasionally makes entertaining decisions. For example, my body insists on waking me up several hours before my alarm every day despite having only gone to bed a few hours earlier. I toss and turn and try to return to slumber, but it seems to be no use, and I find myself rising and puttering around in the soft dawn light.

I’ve always envied morning people, who seems to find their fulfillment in a morning run or early work session. These people will always insist, of course, that they are not morning people, and developed this routine through necessity and determination. Which is exactly the sort of thing morning people would say.

The Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who produced for him 14 children in 19 years, including one who eventually put him in prison. The intimation from our tour guide is that the Taj Mahal is a monument to the power of love and dedication. Our impression was that it was more a monument to the power of slave labor, but I see his point.

This is my first of what I hope to be many updates from India, though it’s still up for debate how often we’ll be running into wireless internet. It’s odd that I’m about to enter a culture essentially opposite my own, filled with earth-shattering poverty, and my major concern at the moment is how often I’ll be able to access the internet. Odd, or sad. One of those.

A long delay on the runway in Houston threw our careful timetable right out the window, and as I grew increasingly concerned that we might be forced to spend the next 24 hours in Newark, New Jersey, world renowned as a land of hope and opportunity. I can tell you from experience that while airplane rides are depressing and claustrophobic chambers, they’ve got nothing on the Newark Airport. 

I'm writing down my thoughts on this historic night not because these thoughts are particularly unique, or possess wisdom that needs to be heard, but rather because years from now, I will want a memory of exactly how I felt on this night. This is for me.

This has been - by far - my all-time favorite post to make.

The list you see here encompasses my whole life. These are the books that I've loved and admired, and returned to again and again, diving headlong into their pages in the throes of nostalgia. To write this post, I spent long, happy hours poking through old bookshelves and libraries and online bookstores, crowing with happiness at the discovery of a long forgotten tome, re-reading beloved favorites to discover them anew.

I've been looking for my childhood. And I've been finding it.