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I finished my Thursday morning HIV presentation, had one last delicious lunch with the ladies of the canteen, put on my sneakers (so strange after 3 weeks of toe-exposing sandals), and set off, heading west (young woman).

Car to the plane to the bus to the plane to the plane to the El and I was home Friday morning, seriously confused about what time it was. 15 hours on a single plane just throws off all your bodily senses: whether you should be tired, or hungry, or how long that baby's actually been crying. Additionally, the Mumbai airport, for any of you who've ever been there, is a total trip. Very Kafka-esque. The international terminal is only accessible from the domestic terminal via a 30-minute tour bus-style ride, where all passengers dump their own luggage into the underside of the bus and a 20-year old Indian security guard with an extremely large gun might decide that he wants your seat and you should sit in the back. All security lines are split male/female, and the female line moves ridiculously slowly thanks to individual, curtained-off patdowns. Big flights technically board an hour prior to departure, but they start taking passengers into a weird little holding area a full two hours before, without explaining the reason. I'm a bit shocked I made it out without major snafus (with luggage, no less).

So back in Chicago, for 48 hours now...and India already feels very far away. While I'm glad to be back among friends, drinking tap water and eating unpeeled fruit with impunity, I'm a little disturbed to transition back so easily. It feels like I should be shocked at the luxury of western living, put off by the coldness of American strangers, and confused by the sound of the TV, like I did when I got back from Tanzania. Maybe three weeks isn't enough to really change my default expectations - or maybe I'm getting used to moving between worlds more quickly. Even if I'm not waking up expecting to hear the sounds of the Mumbai highway, I'm still hoping that SRH left an imprint on my subconscious, from anything as small as the ability to recognize a tuberculosis x-ray to issues as big as how to efficiently allocate scarce medical supplies.