When I was in the country for the Nations Cup draw last week, I discovered that most people are finding it difficult to hold conversations without straying into Nations Cup territory.
In fact, I was out of the country just last week, and I was once again reminded that none of my credit cards are particularly good for international travel.
Some time later, the NY Times acknowledged that I was the first person in the country to notice.
"This time, I felt it was very important to vote, because I saw where the country was heading, in a very opposite direction from the rest of world, " said Patel, who moved to the Houston, Texas, area from India with his parents in 1990.
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The second scene that sticks in my memory was in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth where I was following the performance of my country's squad, the Ghana Black Stars.
When I arrived home in 1954, the country was in recession and I was on the beach for six months.
At the tennis clubs across the country, I was the New York City private school kid who spent weekends at tournaments like the rest of the girls.
And then, we were playing a lot with a great band called the Two Dollar Pistols, and I did a record of country duets where I was the girl singer on that EP.
But part of it was I think a shared recognition that the country was at a crossroads.
When my wife and I moved to Spain in 2001, I thought the country was in a real estate bubble.
My parents before me thought I was living in the greatest country in the world in the best time in the world.
At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all.
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I'm going back to the birthplace of my grandfather, my father, my mom and her side of the family, and I'll be doing so as a devoted and passionate advocate for America, the country where I was born and raised.
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At least one million Somalis have died in the conflict that has raged there for decades, and when I visited the Somali capital Mogadishu recently, the country was undergoing a famine that started during summer 2011 and by unofficial estimates has killed tens of thousands and affected millions more.
This week, I took that blueprint across the country, and what I saw was people who work hard and believe in each other.
The final hymn was the patriotic "I Vow To Thee My Country", and then after a blessing the coffin left as slowly as it had arrived, and, as they caught sight of it, once again the crowds outside cheered.
Before I left, many Australians expressed surprise that I was travelling all that way into the country to go somewhere as godforsaken as Gulargambone.
And then when I was deluged with phone calls from pretty major museums in the country, I thought well hmm this is going to sell for way more than I expected.
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But I have just flown across the greatest country that ever was, in my own small airplane, and I feel insanely happy.
When I was down in City Hall this morning walking around, there was a tremendous amount of people from different parts of the country who said they came here because I asked them to come, and I was very, very happy about that.
The people who chose him as their target and the UN knew that he was the most effective international civil servant in the country, and I might add to all people watching tonight in the United Kingdom, a very great man, whose loss is immense to all of us.
One of the first things that I noticed on my initial trips to China was the enormous investment that the country was making in developing its infrastructure roads, bridges, highways and airports then, to be followed later by high speed trains.
"If I took you to a country where they were reading Sanskrit and I was writing that on the board - well anyone would behave badly - how bored would you be when you tried to follow it and all you could understand was the odd word, " says Mr Ryan.
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Some people do this: the year I got the numbers enough that there was an extra cent collected for each person in the country.
And when I was around your age, I traveled back to his home country of Kenya for the first time to learn his story.
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The last time I checked this was the core of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic that this country was founded upon.
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Then, I asked myself, was that Keith Urban, the country singer with the beautiful twang that my ex use to love?
But what became clear as I researched the issue was how, all over the country, volunteers and communities were managing to keep services open.
And one of the things I focused on kind of early was what I considered to be the most important thing having to do with my country and my country's future.
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