The past few months for me have been a little bumpy (what with the health issues, the weird weather and everything) but overall, life hasn't been bad at all. I'm back home! That's something to be very thankful for. Originally when I set off for Taiwan, I planned to return around Thanksgiving this year, but it ended up happening a little sooner than planned, and I'm really thankful for that (despite the rollercoaster the past 3 months have been), the least of which is because I love this time of year so, so much. I am doubly cheerful this year because I missed the winter holidays last year. Well, I didn't "miss" them, but being in 80*F temperatures during the winter holidays where Thanksgiving isn't celebrated (of course) and Christmas is downplayed just doesn't feel like celebrating the holidays at all.

Here is a short list of things I'm thankful for right now ...

• My family and friends
• Autumn! I've finally decided that this is my favorite season, and oh how I've missed seeing the beautiful colors of fall, and the crisp weather, the fall wardrobes ... and of course harvest season foods!
• The luxury of sort of taking my time to figure out what I want to do next
• The tolerance and ideological freedom of the United States

When people ask me when they should visit New York City, I never hesitate to tell them "October or November." Which happens to be right now.

When I was a teenager going to school on the Upper East Side, I loved all seasons equally because everything was magical all the time. In the fall, there was the start of school, the changing of the leaves, the early nights and creeping chill. In the winter, there were the snowball fights with school crushes, snow angels, anticipation of a snow day. In the spring, love was inevitably in the air as we all sat outside under the blooming trees in the schoolyard, little petals of pollen sticking in our hair and to our backpacks. There was always romantic drama as May turned to June and summer vacation loomed heavily over us ... and then there was summer, which to me was never the most wonderful time of year. It meant not having any excuses to see my crush, long and weary days spent either at summer school or somewhere doing something that was not remotely close to what I wanted to do, which was hang out with my friends. Imagine that!

Well, summer is still my least favorite season in New York City: it's hot and humid, cramped with very little breathing room. To me now, late fall is the time of year New York City is the most beautiful and the most tolerable. The cold isn't yet unbearable, and there is no humidity to deal with. There is a lull in tourist volume until about Thanksgiving. The sun sets early and masks much of the dirt and grime that daylight strips naked. And the nippiness in the air is just enough to give the city that extra spark of magic and romantic glamour that so many associate with New York City.

So I'm especially sad about leaving New York City in the middle of my favorite season here. I'm going to miss the Christmas markets, the hot apple ciders from farmer's markets, the Christmas decorations at Macy's in Herald Square, the unveiling of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, the way Central Park looks during the fall and winter ...

This is the way I want to remember my hometown, even though I don't always love the city:

I think if you live anywhere long enough, you develop a love-hate relationship with the place. That's definitely how I would characterize my relationship with New York, and sometimes how I describe my relationship with Massachusetts.

When I was in elementary school and fascinated with U.S. history, Boston seemed like a dream city. And when I found out about Harvard? Forget about it! I had it all figured out: I was going to move to Cambridge with one of my friends from elementary school, and we were going to share a studio split down the center with a bookshelf -- my room was going to be a shade of purple and hers a shade of blue.

My first visit to the Boston/Cambridge area was when I was in the fourth grade. We did some of the walking trails, visited Faneuil Hall, the Museum of Science, and The Paul Revere House. We paid my "future school" a visit, and I think I even rubbed John Harvard's (statue's) shoe, in hopes that it would get me into the university (it didn't). I visited again when I was 13, and this time I got to see the more "normal" parts of town, like Newbury Street and Long Wharf. And then I visited a couple more times during the college process in high school.

When I did finally go to college, it was in the suburbs of Boston. While I didn't exactly think Boston was going to be the magical city I once thought it was, I did imagine all these beautiful New England college scenes. You know the kind I'm talking about -- paths leading to beautiful colonial academic buildings, covered in red and orange leaves. And I'd watched enough Gilmore Girls that I imagined that maybe life would resemble Stars Hollow.

It was nothing like that. Before the end of my first semester, I was living vicariously through friends who had chosen to attend NYU or Columbia instead of an out-of-state college. I missed the coffee shops that stayed open until 1 a.m., the all-night delis. And by the end of my first year, I pretty much hated Massachusetts.

My greatest grievance then (and now): for a state that gets so much snow so regularly, it sure does not know how to handle snow. Unlike New York City, anytime the state was struck with 4 inches of snow or more, the school system shut down. Another grievance is that winter lasts about 6 months there. And yet another was the hostility (sometimes playful and sometimes not) I got for being from NYC ... even though I cared not an iota for baseball or sports in general, many of my MA friends told their friends of some imaginary rivalry with me over sports. That wasn't fun. For a time, it seemed that almost everyone I met who had been born and raised in Massachusetts was very close-minded and set in their ways ... but then, maybe so was I.

The bus rides back up to school after a school break were torture. Four-and-a-half hours of readying myself to return to a school I hated, nine hours after the Thanksgiving weekend.

I spent the entirety of my third year of college away from my school (which was probably the cause of my hatred of Massachusetts more than anything else), and when I returned for my final year, I had distanced myself enough from the school that I began seeing the charm Massachusetts had to offer all over again. I met some open-minded people and saw a completely different side of the state. In the end, I had most of my worst times and most of my best times in Massachusetts.

I miss little things about it from time to time. Like how ice cream is its own food group in Massachusetts, and is eaten in any and all weather. I miss taking the T with its strange characters, and knowing the Red Line like the back of my hand. I miss South Station's old train schedule board, the one that was made of wood and would send a thunderous series of claps as it was updated (I noticed it was replaced with an electronic board during my last visit, which was a bit of an eye-opening experience for me). I miss Marathon Monday. I miss Rosie's Bakery and J.P. Licks, and that you can pretty much find anything you need on Newbury Street. I miss how desolate yet freeing the city felt, especially on the Mass Pike at 3 in the morning. I miss the small-town feel the city sometimes had. And autumn in New England really is incomparable.

Commuting to and from my internship at The Boston Globe, I would pass through some of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts, and I always saw beautiful houses with a warm glow radiating from the living and dining rooms. Weston was always my favorite town along the route -- I'd make sure to stay awake as we passed through just so I could marvel at the beauty of the town.

Today, I feel I know Boston better than I know New York City. New York City is so big and changes so much and so quickly that it's pretty much impossible to keep up. Boston is a manageable size and moves at a slightly slower pace. The four-and-a-half hour trip is a breeze now, without all that emotional baggage. For many years after college, I thought I couldn't go back -- partially because I'd had as much of Massachusetts as I could handle, and partially because I didn't think I wanted to "ruin" the little good experience I'd had. Now I'm okay with the idea of going back, maybe for graduate school. And maybe I'll finally get the studio I've always wanted with purple walls.

Tattered Cover Book Store

Before I ever stepped foot inside Colorado, I was in awe of it ... because it has just about every West Coast fast food chain I would ever want to eat at, but is not actually on the West Coast. It's got Wahoo's Fish Tacos (despite not being remotely close to a body of water), it's got Carl's Jr., it's even got Ruby's Diner.

And then after college, when I was still uber ambitious about my continual learning, I spent a month or two reading all the Jack Kerouac I could get my hands on. He makes Denver sound like an absolute paradise.

I visited Colorado for the first and only time during a road trip covering six states in the summer of 2009. We flew into Denver and drove through South Dakota and Wyoming from there, so I didn't really get to spend much time in Denver or Colorado, even.

Denver strikes me as a very outdoorsy, athletic city. There were some serious mountain bikers at Confluence Park; I almost got run over a few times (sorry, city girl ... don't really know the rules of bike riding and such). We also took the trolley down to the Capitol building, where there was a fair going on and we got tons of samples of granola goodies.

I did, however, have one of the best brunch meals ever at The Corner Office at the Curtis Hotel (1401 Curtis Street). I'd read about it somewhere or another and made a point of stopping there for the strawberry cheesecake waffles (with graham cracker maple syrup). The other dish we had, which no longer seems to be on the menu, was also delicious beyond belief. The best breakfast potatoes I've probably ever had in my life.

As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven."

 - Jack Kerouac 

Laguna Beach

California

I went for the first time when I was 5, to the Bay Area. I remember it being cold in the mornings and hot in the afternoons. I went again when I was 19, back to the Bay Area, and then on a mini-road trip down to Los Angeles with a friend from college. Our first stop when we made it to the area was Bob's Big Boy in Toluca Lake, where the burger was the best I'd had up until that point. I walked the streets with stars in my eyes -- aside from downtown Hollywood, I thought Los Angeles was just magical.

And then I returned the following spring and my mom and I drove through the beach cities (Newport, Laguna) down to San Diego, where I had my one and only surfing experience. I stood up on my very first wave and couldn't stand up again. It was exhausting. I became addicted to fish tacos and banana milkshakes.

And of course, after college, I tried to "make it" in Los Angeles. I was there for nearly a month, lived on Venice Beach among hippies and possible drug addicts. It was scary, amazing, boring, beautiful, sunny ... but then I started running low on money and came home. I haven't been back since, but I definitely plan on it.

I'm missing most of my photographs of Los Angeles and Venice, but here are some others, from the trips I took in college ...

I stumbled across this cool photographic tribute to America on Zara.com and I thought it would be fitting with my upcoming departure from the U.S. to post what photos and memories I have from my travels through the states ...

Manana, AZ June 2007

Arizona

I think of Arizona each March, when I'm in the depths of cabin fever. I think of tumbleweeds and rainbow-colored sunsets, long and straight roads and a dry heat.

It was at the Grand Canyon I saw the clearest night sky, dotted with diamonds small and smaller. It was the most breathtaking thing I'd seen, and I promised I'd be back.

In 2007, I drove through and tried to capture the eerie twilight hour, though I wasn't too successful.

Since I first visited in 2000 or so, I've thought there was something very romantic about Arizona in its smoldering heat and earthiness. There is something about the Southwest that makes me feel closer to the earth and nature in an almost sensual way.

I remember prickly pear cactus, pink sand, startling landscapes, deep ravines, sherbet striations in rock, slow-moving dust storms ...

I definitely want to go back ... I've only seen Phoenix from the freeway, Tucson briefly, Scottsdale never.