so i'm back, sitting here in the good ole USA. my mind is still mostly back there. i guess that's part of the normal transition period. i miss the freedom of travel and the overwhelming kindness of strangers. in comparison this place seems so much colder, at least when i walk the streets to work past people who won't even make eye contact.
but i'm glad to be back. it's great to be with mrs. noz again. i've got to do a better job to drag her along on these trips with me.
i am really just a dabbler when you get down to it. i have too many interests and my interests are all over the place. with so many passions to manage i do them all half-assed. so, for example, i'm into film, but not as much as the hard-core film buffs. just enough to fake it for the non-buffs. i am interested in arabic, but not all that good at it and i'm hardly much of a linguist. i like to blog, and many of my non-political blogging friends seem to think i am a blogging big-wig. but i know real blogging big-wigs, and i'm not them. this site is just another one of my half-assed interest. i'm not willing to put the time, effort, or money into doing anything more. and so this place lumbers along, being what it is and nothing more.
i like to travel to strange places, at least for a little while. my trips dazzle people at home for my alleged bravery. but they don't realize how safe and easy it really is to do what i do. and they haven't met the real hard-core travelers that i hang around with on my trips: the people who hitchhike from mozambique to kandahar, sleeping on roofs and living on less than $3 a day. when i travel, i dip my toes into the backpacker subculture and become one of them, but only for a little while. i don't think i can sustain it as long as they do. after a few weeks i start to wonder what movies i am missing or get the urge to play settlers of catan, not to mention missing all the people i've left behind.
but still, as much as i was ready to return, it's hard to shift gears between the low-budget travel life and life as an urban attorney in the u.s. i'm resisting the urge to continue posting stories from my travels. there was so much that i didn't mention in the posts i wrote from syria--gripping tales of drama and adventure! but i don't want my entire existence to revolve around the few weeks a year i travel. and i don't want to be one of those annoying people spouting an endless list of places they've been and droning on and on about the costs of apples in tehran when given even the slightest opportunity.
probably, if you meet me in real life and ask the right questions, you can get me going on some longwinded travel story. but here, for now, i think i'm gonna give syria and lebanon a rest. besides, knowing myself, i'm sure it won't take long before my attention is drawn elsewhere and i'm babbling excitedly about something entirely different. there will be some kind of transition on this site. i'm not sure what it will be yet. but as this place reflects my thoughts, i thought you should be warned that i'm in a transition period right now.
anyway, i will be returning to drinking liberally tonight. in spirit i never missed one--every tuesday night in syria i made sure to drink something alcoholic in solidarity with the philly crowd.* but tonight i will be there in body as well. if nothing else i want to prove to some of the locals who worried about me that i wasn't beheaded. inshallah i will see you there too.
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* i know that technically counts as another travel story. i'm sorry. i couldn't resist. besides, it's just one freakin' sentence. cut me some slack!
