Fore nearly two years I have tried hard to assimilate into real life, a true struggle at best. In this exploration, I have reached the early conclusion that my favorite part of the real world is the vacation. It provides you with the light at the end of the nine-to-five tunnel, and affords a month-long lead up of anticipation. And while I am a mere amateur, I like to believe that I have mastered the art of escapism.
So it is not surprising that for the past month, I have been working towards a two-week tour of the Middle East. Since college, I have had a deep personal conflict with the Middle East. I’m not sure why it selected me, but for whatever reason, it has a history of stealing some of my closest friends. Being more of a diplomat than a warmonger, I elected to forgo the armed conflict and err on the side of arbitration by paying the pan-continental region a visit.
Along with my Mer-friend Valerie, we established an aggressive itinerary with stops in Dubai, to visit Christine Devlin, a pseudo-resident working for a strategic consulting firm; Istanbul; and Jordan, to visit Bowman Dickson, who works at a Jordanian prep school. The trip seemed like one big scavenger hunt, having our Lonely Planet checklist of places to see and things to do. We had a whirlwind of a time, thankfully snapping enough picture to provide a smattering of JPEGs combating for honor of new Facebook picture.
Caveat: Most of the photo documentation is attributed to Valerie since I am photographically challenged. For my college graduation, I treated myself to a nice digital camera, a ten mega-pixel camera with great optical zoom and fun features. The first time I took a picture with it went like this. Zoom, snap, drop, whoops. It only took me one picture to break this investment. Talk about an expensive smile! In round two, I changed philosophies and opted for the cheapest digital camera I could find. As a consequence (that I’m attributing to my frugality and not my mishandling of the equipment) the lens doesn’t function properly; rather, it mimics the sound of a wind-up toy with each command to power the camera on or off. Suffice it to say, Valerie’s artistry and perspective will become my own memory of the Middle East as the passing of time will likely require these snapshots to (literally) paint the picture.
The escape was a phenomenal experience, and I now feel imbued with Middle Eastern culture (and cuisine!). Although, I will say, I feel remorseful for my pre-trip categorization and declaration of my excursion to the Middle East. I suppose my conceptualization of the Middle East was attributed to the Disney sensation, Aladdin, which, in hindsight, is rather offensive. I found myself wondering…is this where Aladdin took place? After two weeks, the verdict is still out. Each of the locations along our scavenger hunt were dramatically different (more detail to come), and to categorize them as one in the same is a travesty. The only thing that remained consistent throughout was my ability to find myself turned around in unfamiliar magic carpet lands (although I could only locate non-magical carpets, which were expensive!), and my ability to dream about work. Subconsciously dreaming about my reality while consciously attempting to escape it – how’s that for meta.
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