So. You all need closure. Well, I know that I have needed closure on this trip as well. I have spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about this particular blog, and got harassed last night about it, so decided that it was time to get it done. This is by no means the last blog that I will post, but the last that really directly relates to my travel and more specifically to my time in Nepal. A brief recap of the past month: two weeks of relaxing, a short trip up half dome (in the snow), a short day underwater in Monterey (cold), a few days in DC for Edward's wedding, a few days in NYC hanging with Steve-0 and Alex Chan, then up to Toronto to see Jenny who I worked with in Nepal, then this week back to work. Over the past month I have been asked many times about what my trip was like. Lots of people have gotten a bit of this story, a bit of that experience, but what really was the culminating realization of the trip? What was the definition? Boiled down to one word: Choice. In the western world you have what is nearly an endless list of choices. "I want to eat this for dinner", "I want to wear this today", "Today I'll go to this place and do this thing", "I want to be a doctor", "I want to go to school". For any of these potential decisions you have a litany of choices. A Nepali person does not. For dinner tonight, you will have Dhal Bhaat. And for breakfast? Some of the same. You will wear the same clothes for a week. Your parents will likely decided who you will marry. And if you are the female part of that marriage, you will most likely move in with you husband's family. You don't really have a choice. College? Only if you are lucky. A car? Only if you are really lucky, but more likely a bicycle. A house? Work for years at a low wage while living with you parents, save every dime you can, they are paid for 100% up front. This made me realize just how choice can complicate your life. When I left, I wanted to go to school in NYC or Colorado and then teach. Then I chose to do something else. Now at home when I get up, I have the choice to wear this or that, and it actually is confusing. I came to see that there is alot to be said for their life style. It is hard to exist in that environment, the poverty, the lack of social services, of equity among the classes, but it is the life that they know, the one that they are comfortable with. They make do with so little, and are willing to offer so much. Despite not having much of a choice in the life they live, they are a wonderful people who have more to offer than the average American, who can't be bothered to help his neighbor, and has the destinct impression that the world revolves around his country, blissfully unaware that his little corner of the world is becoming smaller becuase he and his neighbor are allowing it to. How does one take this into his daily life? Take nothing for granted, realize that we are lucky to have these choices? Yes, we are lucky to have the choice, but life can also be great when you don't have one.