The End of a Gap

So, the title makes this sound like this could quite possibly evolve into a piece channelling Graham Greene, but if it does, it'll be against my best efforts. Here is a 20-year-old, turning 21, only just starting at college. What else am I sposed to sound like, other than fermented anticipation and underwhelming exhilaration?

The United 737-400 that brings me from Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok to Chicago O'Hare is steady and not excessively noisy [which is more than i can say for Indonesian aeroplanes], and it lands "excellently" as the air steward announces to us while we're taxiing to the aerobridge. As if we'd expect it to not. Leaving Singapore though, was a little more tenuous. Having worked and travelled for the past three years, I'd think that I'd be able to handle any new situation with finesse and calmness. WRONG. So i went through the gate, über-channel 8, and let out a little giggle at embarking on my latest adventure. For a while, sleeping on the floor of the Hong Kong airport while everyone twisted and turned in the chairs, I felt at home once again, the all too familiar feeling of being on the road again. Except this time it's going to be a really colossal trip. I couldnt fall asleep again.

First impressions of the United States, not amazing. Everything seemed mostly a bleak vision of urbanisation and industrialisation, faceless, cold and mechanical. Visions of Changi are not good to have at the other airports of the world. Pulling into school, luggage-less, I can only think of a shower and some good, hard sleeping. Habits dictate, however, and I take a breath, look around and Have A Moment.

This was it, the aggregate repository of four years of dreaming. Past the mugging, examinations, bad dreams and disappointment. Past the marching, brotherhoods, exhilaration and deathlessness. Past the arriving, leaving, breathing, and separation. In four years of fear and loathing, living and dying, coming and going, there was always this. This is the end of a really long gap year(s). This is Wesleyan University, Connecticut.