Difficulties

I have delayed and delayed the beginning of this - the start of recording my thoughts about this travel experience. I am set to leave this week to go to Amman, Jordan, with a group from DePaul, where I am working to get my Master's in International Public Service. This is a fact that in and of itself is not unusual but given the arc of the story, the circumstances that I leave from and the trip I'm preparing to embark upon, it manages to transcend the everyday. We will be traveling in Amman and around Jordan studying issues relating to refugee management with a focus on the Palestinian situation. During the course of our travels, we'll also get to see Petra (!!!), the Dead Sea and spend a night in Bedouin tent. Clearly, I am beside myself with excitement.

The delay in starting the blog has stemmed from a deep-seated belief that my thoughts and observations are no more or less special than anyone else's. If anything, expressing my own American entitlement in a public forum seems to me to be an unbearable thought. I will strive to keep a lid on it - the entitlement, that is - but know that it will come through in the form of my assumptions and ignorance of many situations and lifestyles.

And the reason my journey is less predictable perhaps than my fellow students comes from my background. For the past 13 years or so I have been near fully occupied with the business of being a wife and mother to three daughters, now 12, 10, and 7. I have taken a couple of brief and very intense breaks to work as a political communications director for two congressional candidates and volunteered with great fervor for Secretary of State (!) Clinton's Presidential run. That work brought me to where I am today, striving to gain the knowledge and experience necessary to work in a similar communications/press capacity for an international aid organization.

I'll try to keep the reflections relevant. And I can promise they'll be humble.