where cultures collide

Just one week has passed from the last day of the five week adventure through Turkey and Cyprus.  Though the official travels ended June 7th, I continue to process and sort through the layers of the issues we discussed, sites visited and cultures we lived amongst during those five weeks.

From birth, I have felt caught between East and West.  Raised in a western home, with American parents, in the middle of South East Asia it feels as though I have flipped back and forth between cultures for years.  Before this trip, however, I had never been to a country that itself is so caught between East and West.  Geographically, Turkey bridges Europe and Asia as it crosses the Mediterranean Sea. As we moved through the country, beginning in Ankara, heading down toward Antalya and then back up the western coast to Istanbul we traveled many roads that have been trade routes for thousands of years.  It is not only in recent years that Turkey finds itself caught between cultures.  Even during the Hittite empire of the Bronze Age, trade between Egypt, Assyria and surrounding cities caused cultures to be shared, moved and translated.  Because of this bridging location Turkey has and continues to be a point of intersection between language groups, religion, values and lifestyles.  Empirial powers have entered and left, added and taken, built up and destroyed.  The people have remained, they seem to shift in part with the ruling authority, but they also influence those in power.

I hope to allow you to see in part what I was able to experience during the weeks in this land of rich culture and history, through mountains and valleys, along the coast and through the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, to then fly to a small island that has been coveted and conquered by nation after nation through history because of its strategic point in the currents of the Mediterranean sea.  I was given the opportunity to begin to see how cultures move and shift, are adopted and rejected.  I want to thank everyone who contributed to making this experience possible.  I will never forget the things I saw and learned. Thank you so much.