Happy Independence Day Everyone - ...from the USA!!

Hello Friends and Family!!

Happy 4th of July!! …with good wishes, actually coming to you from the USA!!

I took a little detour from my plans through Turkey. While coordinating my way to Ghana, I found I could fly through NYC for about the same price as the direct flight to Accra, Ghana plus the hotels for the week in Turkey. So, I decided, feeling a little wary, that a week back in the States to see family and friends and to restock and reenergize was exactly what I needed and the perfect way to get me fully ready, with malaria and diet pepsi prescription refilled, for the rest of the remaining six months on the international road trip around the world!!

I am loving the travel; all I am learning and seeing, between water projects and the people and cultures and the history and the sights and just plain learning about myself and overall personal growth and I am so excited for the whole new world to discover ahead of Africa, India, SE Asia, Australia and New Zealand, but I am also SO thankful to be home for the for a short stop over and to celebrate the 4th – I am loving the world, but being back home, I also am hugely loving the good old USA!!!

With a little break in the action, I wanted to share a poem that my good friend Laura shared with me and some other close friends before we left on a trip to Greece a couple of years back. With having just been in Turkey and Izmir at my doorsteps, and starting this new leg of travel ahead, I thought it was a perfect poem for the time and a great one to share with you all. Thanks to Laura, Homer and C.P. Cavafy, here is Ithaka:

Morning Sunrise on the Adriatic

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon — don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon — you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind –

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained along the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Spice Market in Istanbul

Have a great Independence Day Everyone and Look forward to seeing you all when I return in six months!! – All the best wishes and good cheers!!

Joe

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