[USA 1] : The big sleep

...is what I want but have not had yet (alas).  So I'm finally back in the States and was truly looking forward to having a long 12+ hour sleep to recover from the 15 hour flight and not sleeping very much the night before leaving Hong Kong.  Alas...this is not to be.  My nights are about 8 hours long, which on a normal day is good but not quite enough for recovery.  Maybe tonight will be the night...

Anyways, I don't think I've been away long enough to have reverse culture shock upon return, although I do miss the friends I made in HK, as well as the yummy food and general efficiency.  (Standing in line for 30 minutes, waiting for immigration at Newark, was a profound example of America's lack thereof.)  I will have to do some more processing before coming up with profound lessons learned from this summer, but a couple quick things that I noticed I missed about the States:

• friends and family (especially the newly-arrived Britons)
• people saying "bless you" after you sneeze
• wide open spaces with plenty of accessible greenery and a visible blue sky
• being able to speak my mind and express myself clearly (more of a language ability than anything else)

Things I have not missed include:

• rude Americans (somehow different than Chinese rudeness)
• inefficiency
• allergies (which have been rampant since I arrived)
• high prices

Stay tuned...