So I was sitting amidst 12 friends of mine from the med school at the 'dorf' surrounded by chips, sodas, pizzas, and the remnants of a fun game of Cranium when it just hit me. I AM IN AMERICA. Lol, you'd think I would have noticed that a few weeks ago, like august 8th when my plane arrived in Philly from Paris, or even august 1998 when i first arrived in Michigan. but nope as usual my slow brain took a full 3 weeks to register that fact. It was the most disconcerting experience. Everyone's speaking english, there's the USC and VT football game on TV, people are cheering and groaning along with the game plays at the appropriate times (unlike me and other foreigners who take a few seconds after the fact to process what just happened in the game), and there's pizza and soda everywhere. Wow. when did happen? It's as if America has finally gone from being something in my head that I looked at from the outside to something I'm experiencing firsthand. In the past, whenever I've thought about America I always saw it from Okinawa. I'd have a mental image of myself on okinawa then the pacific ocean and I'd see the North American continent and a little dot where cleveland is(kinda like those little maps you have on the screen on the planes showing your starting and ending point with little planes and lines). wonder if this is good or bad. in either case we had a good time that night. We got soaked downtown heading to the baseball game, which we eventually didn't go to b/c of the inclement weather, and had a fun evening with friends eating and playing games. you should see my photos from twister...:) ¶ 14:42