i’ve had anniversaries on my mind a lot recently.

this year marks 20 years since i finished undergrad and my parents moved back to memphis. next year will mark 25 years since i graduated high school, and it will also be 20 years since i first moved to india.

it’s this last one that’s really been sticking in my head lately. there’s something about marking 20 years since first arriving in bangalore and thinking about how much that seemingly small decision to volunteer in bangalore for 6 months changed all the years that came after that i can’t get out of my mind.

i’m toying with how i want to mark this anniversary, and i keep coming back to wanting to write about it. i started my first blog in 2010 and wrote a bit about my final 6 months before leaving for grad school, and then i documented my return from 2014-2016, but there are still so many stories i want to tell. the bus ride from our first visit to manipal. my sweet shop guy in mysore. that time 16 of us wound up in gokarna together. how it feels all these years later to go back to toto’s in bombay and be greeted like a warm friend. funny stories, silly stories, happy stories, bittersweet stories, all of which i want to share.

so i’m going to think about the stories from those years and start writing about them here. they’re going to be completely out of order and will vary in length and likely won’t make sense to anyone other than myself, but from now until next september i’m going to treat myself to a journey down memory lane and i hope you’ll join me.

xx