Dear all--thanks so much, it is good to hear voices other than my own in my head. I am truly alone out here, doing dissertation research in the desert of NW India. My closest American friend here is working in the capital city, a 12-hour train ride away, so I'm really just hanging on by myself. I know my dad was proud of my work, he and my mom both told everyone about my fellowship, and every time I called, my dad told me he was going to live to see me finish my Ph.D. I hate that I couldn't get it done quickly enough for him to see it completed, and I hate that I accepted a 12-month fellowship that took me away from him so near the end of his life. I mean, I hate it for me, mostly. My guilt seems mostly selfish, I am crying about what I missed because of this time outside the U.S., not necessarily that he missed spending time with me, even though I think he would have wanted to have more time together. I know people in the military must deal with this all the time, losing people back home when they are deployed on a mission. How do they not crack up in the end? I'm trying to fill in the hours. It's hot here, so I can only really run at night. My work is not really holding my attention, so I spend most of the day just hanging on until the moment I can go outside. I've been crying while I run, too, though, so I'm not sure it's doing me much good. I listen to my MP3 player a lot, and I try to sleep a lot, although I'm not doing too well with that. I threw away a lot of stuff of my dad's that I would have held onto, if it wasn't for my mom desire to purge his bedroom. One thing that surprised me, though, is how little stuff he really had. A couple of boxes of model railroad stuff, a lot of computer and satellite equipment, a few books, baseball caps, only a few trinkets... I guess some stuff is still out in the garage, tools, fishing poles, that kind of thing. Now, I don't know, was it always like that, did he always never have a lot of things, or did he get rid of a lot in the past few years? I'll never be able to ask. I pocketed a lighter than I had given him when I was a teenager--if I'd only known the grief that stupid lighter would cause me later in life--an electronic Sudoku game, his wallet, and two shirts. I held onto a few pages of his to do list, not sure why because I can't bring myself to look at them. In a couple of weeks, I have to go to the capital city to take care of some university paperwork. I'm not looking forward to that energy drain, but at least I should be able to spend some time with my friend. That should help me get through the next month.