However, if you’d like to read about our adventures in India, we were blogging about the trip at swooshcompound.com

1. The travel industry needs some major reform.  It’s such a ridiculously complex system for something that really isn’t that complex.  Fare codes, price changes, etc.  I nominate Apple to create iLine, the new lickable, streamlined airline that doesn’t cause major headaches and makes you actually want to travel.
2. Michigan is actually pretty cool.  I met some great people there, saw some beautiful scenery and ate some great tasting, horribly unhealthy food.  Which brings me to point #3.
3. America has a huge health problem.  As much as I’d love to have national healthcare here, I really think that the culture has to change first for it to be economically viable.  The “all-you-can-eat” mentality needs to be destroyed and our sense of value needs to be represented by quality instead of quantity.  However, a mindset change is much harder to do than just throwing money at a problem.  I’m not really sure how to approach this as western culture has a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality, but our personal health and healthcare systems are both broken but no one realizes it.
4. People in rural areas get married much younger than in metropolitan ones.  I knew this before, but I didn’t see a single girl in her 20′s in Traverse City that didn’t have a wedding ring.  I started thinking about it and I think there’s two things that contribute to this.  The first is basic economics.  Since there’s only a few girls in the city, the demand for them is much higher because of the fundamental lack of supply.  In big cities, there’s a virtually unlimited supply of new people to meet, so the pressure isn’t really there.  The second thing is that the local culture that enforces what the economics dictate.  People get married just because other people are.  I know I personally never even think about marriage until I realize that a bunch of my friends are getting married.  I think, “uh oh, I better get on this before I’m Weird Uncle Curtis to all their kids!”
5. Almost everyone in Michigan drives an American car, which is inversely proportional to California.  Similarly, a lot of people in California have Apple computers, but that’s not really the case in the midwest as they see them as “those hippie computers.”  I just find it interesting how products have such strong geographical influences.

That’s pretty much all I learned. I had a great time at Emily’s graduation party and at Shayna’s wedding.  I’ll upload the pictures to my Flickr account soon.  I’ll be back to posting more regularly now as I have several topics ready to talk about.