There are ever so few times when someone comes by and touches your heart in such a way that you are left feeling your life is meaningless compared to the love they are able to give.
International friends association from day one was what brought me close to Luann. Thanks to her, I have not only got a friend but come to know more about Tucson in such a short time. This time too I landed at their lunch for students and signed up for a one night dinner invitation with a family. I had little idea of what was in store. The other two students were May from Iraq(Baghdad) and Dechuan from China. Sitting there in the cozy living room, listening to stories from around the world ....comparing habits and listening to the amazing range of languages that May and Imra(my host) knew...... I was spellbound. Sometimes small incidents make you feel so small. Imra's goodbye hug, the painstakingly cooked dinner, the constant attention to whether each of us were feeling at home , pulling each of us into the conversation ........ small things yes! Small things which left me feeling smaller, that all that governed my life was whether I would land up with some internship somewhere, how was I going to complete the assignment. How small could I get .......... but the way that Luann and Imra and Leonard have touched my lives..... and helped me to learn about life beyond just degrees and competition for higher pay packages ............. is not something I will ever be able to repay them for. I don't know if anyone of them will ever read this, but Thank you to all of you , thank you for touching my life.
December 30, 2006. The earliest that we could set off from our hotel for Universal Studios was 9:30. Once we entered it, we were in something like Neverland......a fairy tale, with all brilliantly colored houses right out of the fairytale books. One building was covered in icicles, one had michael jordan propped against it, one had king kong towering above us......... and the cinema theatre had Hulk glaring out ......... the first thing we did was purchase tickets for the 9:30 night show of Chronicles of Narnia. I had been simply dying to watch the film ever since I had heard all the rave reviews.
Then on a red carpet, a turnstile to show the tickets, and we were in Universal Studios. (What I had been talking about so far was what leads to it). A map listed all the shows and rides and the timings. And thats it .....the rest of the day all we could think of was what we have covered and what we haven't and believe me when I say you really need to plan it out to get everything covered. The problem is not the number of things you have to cover but the amount of time that is spent waiting in front of each show and ride in the unending queues.
And all the while that we were there, I could not belive that I had actually landed there. How many times would I have read and heard about it. How many times would I have envied all my friends who would talk about their visits to Disneyland and here , and show off their gifts from these places from cousins living abroad. And believe it or not, I was standing there too :). I still cannot believe it even while writing. Guess I am too much of a country girl looking in awe at a world I had always read about...... through rainbow colored glasses.
The first show was a trip through a haunted house kind of thing called The Van Helsing fortress after the movie. I would rather not spoil the fun here , but PQP team in Hyderebad and Shobana, Shalini, Lakshmi and Vishnu will know what I mean when I say this is where the haunted house at Imax got its ideas from.:)
The next show was of Terminator, a 3-D show which we had to watch through those 3-D glasses. The effects as part of the ongoing story on screen ......... had me gaping like a codfish. We were all in applause after the show got over especially as the ending swept us off our feet. Following this was a show based on Shrek , that was a 4D experience. :) and I will keep you guessing about what could be 4D.
In between this somewhere we packed in the Waterworld show, which when I was narrating all the stories at home, my brother rattled off as if he knew more about it than me. This one too was a different experience, more so bcoz you get splashed with water in the spectator seats :).
In between trying to manage time for munching snacks, and buying lunch at Panda Express to get a discount only to find the discount coupon was not valid, I got my favorite snap of the entire trip. :) I got a snap patting Matt Damon's prop on the back .......:)))) But the snap has come out great and believe me, you would not realize he is not for real.
After all this we took a three level trip through elevators down to the next level where all the rides where. The Mummy ride , Jurassic Park ...normal roller-coaster rides but the extra punch that each packed left you smiling from ear to ear. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were jumping out at you from ceilings , sideways, and spraying you with water from head to foot. They were just that much bigger and that much more real than similiar rides back home.
Close to the park closing time and among the last people trooping out, we rushed to our waiting show. Chronicles of Narnia just extended the fairytale world for a few more hours. But I felt it dragged at times and had a lot in common with the battle scenes in LOTR.
But with such a fairytale ending to an equally fairytale day...what more could I wish for.
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