I have come to the conclusion that airports are alien worlds. Things do not work here like they do elsewhere. Everything is linear, and the stores and furniture and signs repeat themselves, like a broken record. People interact differently here, they are hurried, concerned, taxed, all of them little fortresses too occupied with being bombarded to worry about much else.

Washington-Dulles is not a very attractive airport, it is rather cramped, and its age is beginning to show. Even so, it is still an airport, and so it is a monument to the art of moving people. People make such big things devoted to relatively simply tasks, like moving people, or making electricity, or paper, I am in awe of them. They are things not defined by aesthetics or comfort or spirituality, but more modern ideas, like efficiency. Still, this produces an aesthetic all its own, and a very interesting one that challenges us as humans.

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I keep alternating between waves of fear and excitement: fear, that I am going to another country, where not only do I know no one, but I also no nothing of the culture or language, so I have to learn what is right and wrong and acceptable all over again; excitement, that I will be seeing a place unlike any I have ever seen before, with people who see the world in a different way from me. It will be challenging and uncomfortable, and it is my biggest fear that I will find I prefer the comfort of home. But I do not think this will happen. Challenges are always rewarded, even if its rewards are intangible or even indescribable.

In three hours, I will board my plane, and be on my way to the other half of the world. I won't just see a different culture, and a different language, but a different sky! New stars in the night-time, constellations I have never learned in school, Polaris will be out of sight! New plants and animals, new geographies! I can't wait.