End of an era (error?)

I am writing this on a plane somewhere west of Greenland from our fancy-pants Q-Suite cabins on board our flight to AMERICA.
We left Lahore for our final time last night/ this morning/ I don't know what day or time it is. We're glad to be moving on.

Ahh, so young and ignorant... Here's a picture from our first day in Lahore.

And our last day. Bye Pakistan!

The last few days (and weeks and months) have been tough to get through, as most count-downs are. I don't know for sure if I'm repressing a lot of emotions, but mostly what I feel is relief. It's time for a change.

Over on my professional site (which I just spruced up if you want to take a look: lindjonath.com), I decided to make my final blog post about things I'm thankful for, rather than how shitty the last two years have been. I'd like to repeat myself a little about the two or three things that have gotten me through on a personal level.

1. YOGA: This is our yoga group after one of our last classes at our house. We've been practicing together 2-3 times a week for almost two years straight. It's been something to look forward to, and we've gotten to be pretty tight with both the other teacher in the class, and the instructor (the guy on the right). We're really proud of how far we've come; we both recently pulled off crow pose!

2. A brief history of our time at home through puzzlin:

For me, puzzlin makes me think of home with my parents, usually at holidays, sitting around the big table after most of the hectic day is done, quietly working on puzzles with whoever was still hanging around, occasional mumbled commiseration over pieces that should fit but don’t, the linchpin piece you just can’t find, and philosophical metiphorization about the lessons that puzzlin can teach us about our place in the universe.

Puzzlin turned out to be a great way for us to pass time in a place where we didn’t really have much of a social life, or many options of things to do outside of our home. Now, puzzlin will always also remind me of quiet evenings and lazy weekend mornings listening to music and zoning out with puzzles.

I’m usually the sorter and organizer, methodical and shape-oriented; Rani’s great at finding visual clues and working with the overall picture. I prefer to take known pieces to the unknowns, while she prefers bringing the unknowns into the existing puzzle. Do with that what you will.

April 2018: We bought our first puzzle together in a hip little game shop in Paris during spring break of our first year. It was a mini-puzzle, and I remember the shopkeeper warning us that the pieces were really small. 

We should have listened; I had to take pictures of some of the pieces so I could blow them up to try to figure out where they went.

June 2018: our first proper 2000-piece puzzle, bought in Dubai (in honor of the Paris trip) before we found a local source, and completed on the dining room table after we realized how big it was…

October 2018: We utilize an old bar from the back room to put together a proper puzzlin station, giving
the activity its own spot in the corner of our living room.

November 2018: The beast. We started this motherfucker, realized how goddamn big and ridiculously impossible it was, put it away for awhile to do an easy one, and finally finished it in March.

December 2018: A nice break from the beast.

As we entered the final hundred days of our time in Lahore, we began needing the distraction more and more.
Mad puzzlin ensued:

April 12: a nice easy interlude with lots of contrast and patterns. Also introducing the PUZZLE MAT, bitches! That’s right, we’re this fucking serious.

April 28: The puzzle mat came with two janky-ass puzzles whose pieces are kinda too small and all fit together, even if they weren't supposed to. You’ll see what happened with the other one at the end.

May 11: We were intrigued by this panorama puzzle, even though it was ALL FUCKING BLUE, RANI!

May 22: A last-minute purchase on our last grocery run. 

May 31: Janky #2: I had planned on having our last few hours waiting to go to the airport to finish this guy, but a couple of teachers from the hood stopped by to send us off, and it didn’t end up happening. We left this as is, hoping to inspire others to puzzle in our stead.

And, I'm going to just quote the last paragraph from the other blog:

Finally, I really couldn’t have gotten through this time without my wife. We made it, babe! For all of the support, advice, commiseration, puzzlin, workouts, daily life-threatening drives to work, bitch-sessions, jokes, snugglin’, Netflix marathons, trip planning, upside-down couch sitting, ceiling projecting, crying, laughing, dreaming, laughing, wondering, laughing, laughing: THANK YOU RANI!