August 6 (Monday)

My last stop and I'm definitely looking forward to going home, but I wasn't so burned out that I didn't enjoy sightseeing and hanging out with friends here.

I went to both the Southwest Museum and the Getty Center Museum in Los Angeles. Personally, I would recommend the Southwest over the Getty, even though the Getty has an annual budget thousands of times larger than the Southwest's. The Getty was too pretentious and felt like the Disneyland of museums. The Southwest Museum had an astounding collection of Native American artwork from the Southwest, especially the pottery and basket collections. The pottery exhibit had excellent written information about the artists and the development of different styles over the centuries and in different tribes, which I really appreciated.

The cliche about Los Angeles is that it is a couple dozen suburbs in search of a city. It is huge and sprawling and I couldn't imagine living here without a car. I've been quite aware how much more diverse Los Angeles is than Seattle - I can't remember if the Hispanics alone make up a majority, or if the combination of Hispanics, blacks, and Asians makes up the majority, with the whites in the minority. At any rate, almost all of the billboards I've been seeing are in Spanish, and searching through the radio dial results in just as many Spanish stations as English.

During the weekend I attended a men's retreat in the hills above Malibu. I had planned the ending date for my trip to coincide with this retreat, but it was a little difficult to enter into the discussions on intimacy and sexuality when I've been totally immersed in this trip for the last two months. But I'm glad I attended at any rate - it's given me good food for thought for later.

The retreat location was absolutely gorgeous. It was held on an old ranch owned by the Frank Lloyd Wright family, and the views of the surrounding hills and ocean were fantastic. On Saturday night it was exceptionally clear and there was a full moon. We could see the lights of Los Angeles and all the other suburbs to the south on the coastline, plus the reflection of the moon on the ocean. Magical.

It's been great seeing my friend Karmen again. We met a couple years ago at a Star Trek convention (yes, I'm one of those people, although I'm not really a fanatic about the different series) and have stayed in touch via email and phone since then. Part of the richness of this trip has been deepening existing friendships. By visiting friends, rather than staying in hotels, I've been able to see different parts of the world from the perspective of those who actually live and work in these locations.

Tomorrow I fly back to Seattle. I am looking forward to seeing my friends there, and I admit to a certain longing for my own bed, kitchen, and shower. I can't think about job hunting yet. And I feel like it's too soon to try and come up with a summary of what this trip has meant to me.