Not dead, not numb, not withering, or, I Need Your Brilliance

I fell into something of an emotional pit a couple weeks ago, but I think I've managed to crawl out. After getting Quite Happy on wine yet again at the Point on Saturday night--(I'm not, by the way, as much of a raging drunk as I realize it must seem like I am on this thing. It's just that good stories and a tendency toward wanting to write both blossom from the bottle. I'd say I usually enjoy the drink maybe twice a month [that said, I have a lot of friends with spring birthdays and a fondness for campfires])--I came home and did a little drunken investigation and review and, as vague as that sounds and shall necessarily remain, stumbled upon the usually obvious conclusion that a) I am where I should be, b) I am with the people I should be with, and c) nothing else would make as much sense.

Are you with me?

It's a nice finding. Or discovery. Or self-discovery. If I need to remind myself of these things again and again, so be it. When your life feels so static, and you all but live alone in your 3-person apartment, and you can't work up an interest in your homework, and it feels like no one's looking into your little life-window--there are dips. If I could make that sound less whiny and simply bored and exasperated, you'd get an idea.

And so I welcome India, which I leave for in a barely comprehensible ten days. That's within reach, but I've yet to really understand that. In ten days I'll stumble off a plane into a world of Devanagari. In ten days I'll be surrounded in fast-paced, incomprehensible Hindi. In ten days it'll be chai and rice and chutney. It'll be saris and auto-rickshaws and beggars and Muslims and Hindus and indigestion and sand and heat and elephants and camels and uncomfortable beds and no skin showing and sudden minority status and bottled water.

Really? In ten days? And in between now and then I've got to write three papers and take a Hindi final? And take a trip to Michigan and pay a visit to my grandfather in the nursing home? And come back again? And buy what I need, and pack for six months?

But it's all so perfectly timed, you see.

I want to write when I'm there, but I'm not sure about the accessibility of internet cafes. I've heard they're numerous and cheap, though. I'll see what I can do. Regardless of the blawg, I'll be recording every breath and piece of naan and monkey siting in my wonderful, beautiful journals. Which I have yet to buy, but soon.... the beautiful journals will abound.

NOW, here's where you, dear readers (I know there are at least ten of you, I counted), come to my aid. When meeting your host family, it is considered polite and decent behavior to bring a gift. Because I am quite obviously a polite and decent person, I need a gift. I have ten days to acquire said gift. Some facts: 1) I have no idea how many people are in my host family, and it could range from a young couple with 15 chil'n to an old couple to an old Panjabi woman who always cooks rice and burnt lentils and collects study abroad students (this last one being a real example from last year), HENCE, 2) I have no idea the AGES, SIZES, or PREFERENCES of my host family. It is likely, however, that they will be an older couple (extra rooms). Nevertheless,

I need a completely inoffensive, not sizest, not ageist gift. And I want it to represent the best of America. My mind clings to what I would consider to be the strikingly awesome power of music, but when I pitch the "OMG A MIX CD" idea to people, they tend to squirm and say, "How about a Sox cap?" ...and I submit that maybe the gift of music violates the whole "preferences" quotient of this exercise.

So help! Gimme some suggestions, before I have to withstand the lasting humiliation of sitting in an aged Indian woman's apartment kitchen, watching her furrow her brows to the sound of Laura Veirs.