autumn

I went from the build-up to summer (Dar) to the wind-down to winter (Berlin), and I can safely say that I am not a hot weather girl. I've always said that I get totally unreasonable when the weather is really hot, and being home, wearing a jacket, having leaves fall (it's so GREEN)...all lovely. The moon is also hanging the normal way up in the sky, with the half topside rather than bottomside. Forget about the water running the other way down the drain -- the lower half of the moon is the weirdest thing about the southern hemisphere.

I flew through Dubai last night, and was supposed to get a night in a hotel because my layover was longer than 8 hours. This was exciting! Staying in Dubai! It got cut to 5 hours because of delays in Dar, which meant that I sat at the airport for nearly 5 hours before my plane left. Dar does not have enough to keep your attention for 5 hours, nor is the general waiting area air conditioned, so I read a lot of the books in the duty-free shops and pretended to be looking at t-shirts. What was worse, I had given up my TZ SIM card, so the phone was not an option. This, and the fact that the taxi I had ordered specifically because his car was air conditioned cancelled on me a half-hour before I wanted to leave, made me think it was all trying to make me want to come back to Berlin. I did get to have one last cold Stoney Tangawizi, which makes me love Tanzania, but I was glad to get on the plane just to get the process of travel started.

I arrived in Dubai at 2:30 a.m. and it was 28 C. Imelda has noted how insane the heat is. It is. The hotel was strangely humid, very impersonal, and totally gloriously clean and modern, white, white sheets. Three of the best hours of sleep I have ever had. I had a pretty efficient morning, making all the right shuttles and so forth, but my real treat was going into the massive duty free complex and slathering myself in my perfume, and trying out the Stella lotion, creme, whatever. I haven't worn my perfume for 2 months! And after weeks of not even wanting to think about smelling myself -- this is something we all laughed about, going through the days as it got hotter -- it was pretty glorious.

All told, for not really thinking too hard about the travel beforehand, it was very uneventful and highly efficient. I bounced through Hamburg after a nice flight with good movies and good row companions, got on a train 20 minutes after arriving at the train station, and had a friend to meet me in Berlin. Two other friends who had minded my keys in my absence met me in my apartment, and I somehow ended up not carrying a single piece of my own luggage up my 5 flights of stairs. I'm now ready to unpack a bit, settle in, and then turn right back around and leave on Tuesday for Washington. But god, does it look nice. Fall here is so pretty, and we're in the "goldene Oktober" rather than the rainy crappy Oktober that also can happen.

I think I was afraid of feeling totally alienated from my own life here, that everyone I know would be gone and home wouldn't feel right anymore, but that was bonkers. Home is home, and this is home right now. My folks are still here, the neighborhood hasn't changed drastically, and while Dar has, once again, left its little marks on me, I kind of like them, and I'll take it forward.

That is, after I sleep. I don't even want to think about how little sleep I've had these last few days, but the average is just really asking to get sick. And that won't do!