Kickin' It Back in KC

After way too many hours on airplanes, I got back to Kansas City late Monday night/early Tuesday morning.

I've suffered a bit from jet lag, slept in until 4PM my first day back and I didn't sleep well last night, but overall everything is really nice back here in the US.

There's been snow on the ground since I got here. Has been a fun thing to play around with. My brother and I went and threw the football around the other night. Good fun.

I went out to my friends and my favorite bar last night. Friends of mine from many different time periods came out. It was a bit surreal to be out with my friends, people who I've grown so close to, when I hadn't seen them in such a long time. Though, I'm a firm believer in the idea that your best friends are the ones who you don't need to be in constant contact with to be close to.

Everything around Kansas City is pretty much the same I remembered it from when I was last here, sixteen months ago.

There's that whole financial systems collapsing thing which is new. People seem to acknowledge that something completely messed is going on on a daily basis, but are sure that things will be back to normal by the end of 2009 or by the beginning of 2010.

I hope they're right. I suppose that this is what America's punditry and intelligencia have been telling everyone here in America.

I'm just not that optimistic about the situation.

One of the things that living in a developing country has done to me is convince me that the lifestyle my family and friends enjoy in suburban/urban Kansas City just doesn't seem very sustainable.

This may very well be the gloomier and doomier side of my beliefs, but it is my first reaction being back and looking at the economic crisis through my experiences.