All Shook Up

I find myself here on the twelfth day, craving something or anything familiar. Even as I was sitting in a mall drinking coffee and watching Elvis sing "Jail House Rock", I still wasn't satisfied. In fact, I wasn't even close to being satisfied. In the same breath, I can't imagine being anywhere but here. I can't place myself back home in Montreal because I know that when I do in fact fly 'home' to Montreal I will be an entirely new person. This experience in India has shifted things in me. There have been the obvious changes, like global and political awareness, but what has thrown me off the most, is the shifting of things deep to my core. Who would have thought that at 25 I could have already been set in my ways? I'm learning more about how to work with large groups of people and negotiate boundaries than I am about dealing with 'culture shock' because to be honest, there has been very little 'shock'. For every cultural difference that I've noticed, there have been 20 similarities. I knew that coming here I would probably return home a slightly different version of who I was, but I never would have guessed where these profound changes would take place.