American Summer- Part 5 - Summary of all the rest of the events

I'm super sorry for this awesomely delayed post..but i had no choice..was too busy running around the last few weeks in US and in Chennai....it did feel good to be back home..but now, boredom is kinda killing me..

I stopped at my St Louis trip...after which i spent a weekend at Buffalo, New York, on the banks of the Niagra River....as u can guess; to view the magnificent Niagra Waterfall. It's an amazing sight to see..the power of Mother Nature and its strength never fails to impress anyone..It is truly majestic...within one day there i had clicked about 150 photos..and i still couldn't get enough of it.

More to that we had gone there with 3 other families..a total crowd of 14 ppl...

I didn't want to leave Niagra at all..but we had only 2 days there..and the rain kinda dampened the second day...but i can proudly say i got wet in the waters of Niagra..:D

After the Niagra weekend, was the weekend at Florida...the big reception party that everyone was so hyped up about..relatives had flown in from all over US and some had even flown in from India..and the organisers, Ambi Athai and Ravi Mama, were rich..so the party was expected to be a splendour of extravagance. Ambi athai, is seriously one of a kind..so kind and friendly..she spoke to me as if she had known me for years when we had just met that night. Though she was rich, she behaved really simply. Almost everyone in her whole family was so welcoming; maybe its their culture or its just the way they were brought up...but they just gave me a hug as if they had known me very well. The party was nothing short of awesome...great people, awesome food, a beautiful dance floor with a performance by my younger cousins and even all the oldies dancing..:D Even though all of Ambi Athai's kids are either married to or going out with Caucasian Americans, they are still in touch with their culture (maybe not to the extent that we know)..and more than that, they are gems in their character and profession...

But all good times come to an end....=( The last week was spent on doing packing and last minute shopping....however i did learn a lot from the trip..about myself, my relatives, the culture in the US and about all lot of the minute details of life which no teacher or no one actually mentions....some profound thoughts...some thoughts which you have never even thought about...and some trivial things which one often overlooks....

Whatever it may be..travelling alone was the best part of the whole journey....no strings attached, and you can go at your own speed...though my mom did have sleepless days and nights on the times i was travelling..=P

On the whole, US is an awesome place to live..multi racial society...beautiful roads..as long as u have ur job and u earn money..you can live peacefully and happily.

I personally would love to stay there in future..my only concern would be that inevitably, kids growing up in the US lose their culture and their language cos the society does not give them an opportunity to develop it like in S'pore..where the preservation of our heritage is highly emphasized....Though it also depends on how much we bother to enforce these values and give priority to them at home...you can't expect ur kids to talk in tamil if you yourself talk to them in English right??? (but seeing kids in India also, i think s'pore kids are far better in talking tamil and knowing their culture...)

So its all comes down to what you want.....where again lies the hard part in finding out what EXACTLY we want....=D seeing that i still have the time to think about all that...i'm going to enjoy the moment that i have right now...

Ciao..this is the last post on the American Summer series..but watch out for more related posts and maybe even some of my poems and drawings...=)

Signing off,

Sakthi..;P