I love the new perspective your journey has given you. Over the past month or so, your openness and sincerity about life in general has been wonderful.

I remember the boy I started dating almost eight years ago now. I then think about the man he has grown into and the evolution from a small-town conversative to a person who truly appreciates differences, culturally, physically, and spiritually. Your growth has amazed me.

I am so luck to have you in my life and please continue to post your thoughts, or start your own blog as you have been wanting to do.

Tasha

Regardless, I was really taken with what you had to say because I have been living abroad in New Zealand for the last five months and I have to tell you it has been a refreshing breath of fresh air to be away from US media and influence. The only media coverage I got of the Iranian president’s visit to the states was on the nightly news here and I have to say, I was appalled to hear how undiplomat the American people were. Thankfully the news I saw was very cut and dry, not sensationalized but non the less I felt my heart break a little bit.

While you and Ryan were travelling through a very different part of the world than the one I am living in, the one thing that I have come to realize is what I will nickname The Great Myth of Anti-Americanism around the world. I have had the pleasure of meeting people from all over the world living here and outside of a few cracks about Bush, most people have no problem with us. When I was at home in the states, I became so tired of hearing that muslims wanted to destroy our way of life, that we were fighting for our freedom and way of life, and that I shouldn’t travel places and tell anyone I was an American because it was dangerous for me but the truth of the matter is this, US Media has an overwhelming ability to keep us scared and as a majority we believe them. If we stay home within our boarders, our government will protect us and there is no need for us to go anywhere else because we truly do have everything we would ever need….Except worldly information, so we live in blissful ingnorance and those of us that don’t? Well, how easy is it to just bitch behind closed doors, online blogs and in our own personal minds?

I met a man yesterday who is teaching at a university over in Australia, he was a graduate from Yale university in political policy and has worked around the world teaching and instructing in diplomatic relations, I believe…Anyway, it was interesting talking to him because it had been a really long time since I had spoken to an older, intelligent American. We had an interesting chat as I sorted him out with some Icebreaker about what is going on in the States at present. We talked about the upcoming election and the candidates we had…I told him I truly believed in my generation and the ones up and coming to really make a change in the world. I said the political parties had to give us a candidate that we wanted to vote for. And he said to me…”We don’t vote in canidates anymore, we just vote them out.” I was struck by how simply profound that was, because I knew this inside but never really thought much about it y’know? I vote, but always because I didn’t want the other guy not because I was particularly fond of the guy I was voting for…so which is worse? Unfortunately, American politics lack the integrity under which they were originally founded, yet, you know..I think I will remain “ignorantly” optimistic that things have to change because I truly believe they must and will.

I just think it’s time we demand our goverment to be responsible but until we can do that, we will continue to laugh in the face of diplomats who come to share their truth because well…we can’t handle it.