Karen Bradford:  

Life June 2011 - I am just home from five weeks --- expenses-paid --- in Turkey, leading a group of four on an organized program called Group Study Exchange through Rotary International. It is designed for young professionals to meet with their business counterparts to see and feel life in another culture by exchanging experiences with their foreign peers, visiting historical sites and living with Rotarian families. We started in Istanbul and traveled along the Aegean coast, living, including visiting Troy, the Gallipoli peninsula, Ephesus, Izmir, Bursa, Bodrum and a most lovely day on a sailboat and snorkeling. Two of the highlights for me were walking around the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace. I'm planning a return next year. The Turkish reputation for hospitality is rightly deserved! I went to Venezuela three years ago on a volunteer mission as a photojournalist with Rotary to document more cleft-lip repair surgeries. I was assigned two bodyguards just to cross the street to photograph the hospital because kidnapping for ransom is big business. In a newspaper article, President Hugo Chavez called our group "imperialists who were there to destabilize (his) country." (This was after, of course, we finished treating 101 of his citizens.) I felt safe enough, but our hotel and the bospital both were surrounded by chain-link fencing with razor wire around the top. When I went swimming in the ocean, the guard was there in case I was threatened, not if I was drowning! Next year will include more writing that I have been postponing and my third trip to Tibet: I am going with some friends to trek a pilgrimage around Mount Kailash, which Tibetan Buddhists consider the center of the world, and Lake Manasarovar. A dip in the lake is said to provide the best possible reincarnation. Last year, I remember I wanted to scream just to wash my hair in water that cold, let along my whole body. Stay tuned. I recently finished writing and editing the 30-year history of a local nonprofit, so I am happy to get back to my own life! Last year, I spent five weeks in Asia (my fifth trip there) which included the base camp (17,500') at Mount Ever...Expand for more