Coming to Grips with Life Abroad

Views from the Steward Outpost....Oregon

So we have finally come home....to our stateside home anyway. Arriving in Grants Pass late last evening we have several meetings scheduled along with some final doctor appointments to get clearance to return to the Silk Road. But in the meantime we hope to be able to clear our heads a bit...overcome a little discouragement over how slow the process is going and frankly, the reception of our love for Asian culture. And....take a few hours of each day to relax and try to find our heads.

Being at my folks place in GP gives us some emotional and literal space....maybe I will bore you with some of my deeper thoughts during this time. But for me, the significance is that I have finally got to a place where I am ready to write again. Therapy for me, and an ordeal for you. I know...one man's pleasure is the other's pain.

I was asked by a woman I love, (no not a blood relative) how my years abroad had changed my perceptions on life, religion and the mess the world is in general. My response was simple. I know, now, what it is like to be an American living in a Muslim world in a time when the West in general, is not highly thought of in the East.

And yet, I was accepted and loved for who "Stan" is by virtually every Turk, Kurd, Iraqi or Iranian I met. I was pampered, protected, tolerated with my out of culture fubars and still brought into an Islamic family and neighborhood as one of their own. What that all means right now I can't explain. Only...that what I experienced from my Musilm brothers....I want to enlarge my capacity to do the same to those I have fundamental shifts of ideology, lifetstyle, and religion that would normally put up walls in our relationships.

I miss our Istanbulu family and friends terribly and we are hoping to be able to return on schedule in February or March 2010. Want to help send us back? Yeah....I thought so):
My Sweety of 29 Years and Me

My View as I Write Tonight