….Although to be honest I am excited about the t-shirt. Seriously, there will be t-shirts.

So I’m back home in the US, and while it offers comforts like my dog, a coffee maker I know how to use, and my very own bed, it is sadly lacking in crazed German-speaking Bollywood fans. I know, I know, that’s no way to live. These people are fantastic - and completely out of their minds (I know they will take this in the complimentary and awe-struck spirit in which it is meant).

Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen any of my home-town friends yet, but I’m a little down in the dumps today, missing all these new friends and feeling very disconnected from everything. This happens most of the times I travel, and on the plane from London to Chicago yesterday I found myself wondering what nationality has to do with one’s sense of where one belongs - and then quickly decided that it must vary from person to person and that it is perfectly okay to feel that you belong in many different places but with a certain special type of people, and people can of course be located wherever. Home is where the heart is, and one’s heart can be in many places - with many people, that is - at one time. At least, mine can. And is. Anyway, I think the Google translation of Paint It Pink’s post about going home says it best: “Why does one have to say good-bye to dear humans always so soon? Menno. The world is unfair and bad.”

Speaking of translation…my goodness, is my German ever not up to snuff. Many of the finer points of the weekend’s conversations were lost on me, which at first made me really sad, because clearly these Deutsch-wallahs were having a fiercely fun time. So I mostly just tried to listen as carefully as possible and didn’t join in conversations because I couldn’t, and quickly I began to fret that I was missing out on most of the fun, that everyone probably thought I was a sad-sack wallflower, and, most importantly, that I wasn’t going to be able to get to know these wonderful people. But even with my language barrier, I quickly picked up on the very strong sense of high-quality community - and realized how the love of Bollywood is an impressively effective lingua franca. (And special thanks to Eduardo, Koi, Babsi [the actress one; there was so much of Babsis at this event] Kaddele, Maini, Birgit, and of course dearest Michael, who took special English-language care of me when I probably looked lonely and sad, too frightened to try to jump into the other swirling conversations.) While I may have missed the details, I know, thanks to all the other kinds of interactions there were, that I was a full part of the heart of the weekend.

To give you some idea of how much fun we had, and why I’m sad not to be there anymore - and believe me, I had a blast even when I wasn’t able to understand what was going on - here are some pictures, just a few out of the over 400 currently in the Bollywood Blogger Meeting Flickr pool.

Koi, who knows Hindi properly and is a professor and a mad, mad dancer; Maria; Babasko; the edge of Michael; Marco; and me

Koi, Maria, Michael, Marco, and me - I think we’re dancing to “Kaike Paan Banaraswala,” which Michael suggested as a way to life out spirits after the big pile of KANK in the awards results put a damper on our mood.

Maini, who will soon be starting up Bollyfun in Norway; Kaddele, in whose esteemed pink -painted presence I was honored to spend some time; and me

Michael, me, and Babasko - whatever it is we’re doing, clearly the sentiment is “Vah! Vah!”

People who read my regular blog (okay, blogs) may know that I have had a long-standing plan to get all of my favorite people to move to my town (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, population ek crore, surrounded by soybean fields and hog farms and a good two hours from any major city). It’s becoming increasingly obvious that that isn’t going to work, so I’m formulating a new plan, which is that all my favorite people who do not want to move to Chambana should move to Mumbai. Some of us have even dreamed up a way to make it work: we’re going to try to sell an Indian tv channel on our reality show idea, which is that a gaggle of foreigners live in the beachfront house from Om Jai Jagadish and work at making a Bollywood movie. Cameras follow us around as we pitch the idea to directors and stars, learn about how to make costumes, work out the choreography, fight over who gets one-on-one coaching time with Saif, etc.

Thank you so much to everyone or being your fine, funny, loveable selves and for putting up with my pathetic language skills and embracing me - literally - because of this crazy love that we could somehow tell that we all shared, no matter the language. I am a lucky girl indeed to know people like you and to be a part of a community that enjoys each other so much.