"Namaste from Bangalore! I have now been away from Toronto for close to three weeks - first in Boston, then Geneva and now Bangalore. During that time, my life as a traveling professor has been so intense that I haven't had a moment to start this blog! In Boston, we had intense but productive meetings."
Things never changed. Things never became less intense. I rarely had time to reflect on our experiences let alone write about them. Then I came back and thought it would be pointless to write about our journey after the fact. Now I'm being taken back on the winding, spiralling paths as I think of Josh and remember so many moments we shared. While he is detained in Iran with our communication abruptly and painfully cut short, moments of memories randomly flash through my mind. And I want to take our journey together again.
My blogging of our journey retraces the journey in my mind. Winding, spiralling, webs of memories sometimes triggered by specific encounters, experiences, other times by powerful feelings emerging from deep within. Today I saw a group of people practising Tai Chi in Riverdale Park overlooking the sweeping Don Valley. A group diverse in age and race "waving hands like clouds" with slow, tranquil, intention ('man jing yi' in Mandarin). And I remembered Josh Tai Chi-ing throughout our journey. And living with 'man jing yi'.
Well, it really began in my straw bale apartment in the Gatineau hills, when I received the phone call offering me the job of Traveling Professor for the International Honors Program. I felt so intensely excited about the offer that I walked out of the house without my cell phone, and then without my map, as I tried to come back down to the earth I was standing on so that I could find my way to my office picnic at Britannia Beach. I envisioned myself leaving that beautiful earth I had lived on for the past year for new adventures with new people in new places all over the world. First Boston, then Geneva, then Bangalore, Changsha, Cape Town and beyond. Traveling miles. 
We met the students in DC...at the airport. A chaotic time and place for introductions. While I awaited their arrival I walked through the airport absorbing the historic moment. It was a mere few days before Obama's inauguration and in true American style, the airport was full of Obama paraphernalia. Books, t-shirts, chocolate bars, gum, and paper dolls...of course. The life size one was the best. I wanted to take it with us.
This is the book I never read
