I’m on the 3rd leg of my trip. The first, driving from goshen to windsor, started at 5am this morning. The second, the train from Windsor to Toronto, at 10am. Now its 5pm and I’m somewhere between Toronto and Montreal. I get in at 8pm. 13 hours, 2 states and international boarder and 2 provinces later I will arrive, returning to the pulsating, buzzing city. Although I am of course excited to arrive, I’m thankful for these hours in between places. Today I am glad we haven’t figured out how to travel at the speed of light. The speed of this train is just right.

The trip is pleasant. I doze, read, snack (on a carrot from the farmer’s market currently). Andrew Bird whistles sweetly through my headphones. Across the aisle is a Japanese family. Two cute girls dressed in pink chatter in sounds I even begin to comprehend as their dad reads the National Geographic Traveller’s Guide to Canada. I sit next to an Indian man who I haven’t exchanged more than a few excuse me’s and thank you’s with. He is clearly not North American. As I alternate between listening, ready, writing, eating, or all doing all simultaneously he sits and dozes contently. He hasn’t wiggled at all. The only media I saw him consume was reading the fine print back of his ticket.

At first was reading the “Yoga Tradition” a 500-page history of yoga, one of the required readings for my teacher training. After a couple of hours I was exhausted of that and started “Eat, Pray, Love”. This is a memoir of sorts by Elizabeth Gilbert that was recommended to me early in the summer, and which I was hoping to get my hands, but was also reluctant because of all the required reading I need to do for YTT. But then a day before I left, a gift showed up on my doorstep from my most lovely friend summering in NYC- and it was serendipitously the aforementioned book. I only just started it, but I’m loving and savouring it already.

Gilbert is insightful, thought provoking, honest and makes me want to laugh out loud- all at once. She articulates so well many of the questions that I am asking myself in this growth-spurt of the soul that I’ve been experiencing over the past few months. And her portraits of foreign as well as American culture are strikingly pointed and witty.

In this day of transition and travel I feel present, full, well and thankful.