I love themes – theme parties, theme parks, and of course theme posts!  Since I can’t travel abroad right now, I enjoy living vicariously through others’ blogs as they galavant around the world.  Thus the theme – Abroad Blog of the Week!

Although I follow a good number of abroad blogs, not many have brought a smirk to my face like My Embassy Letters.  The blogger, Barbara, went to Jordan this past fall and though her blog is no longer active, it is still one of my favorites.  First, Barbara is extremely witty and brutally honest – both make her blog entertaining and worthy of being added to my Google Reader.  Second, I don’t know much about Jordan so I’ve learned a lot from reading My Embassy Letters and thoroughly enjoyed the stories of living with a Muslim Jordanian family.

But my favorite post is Barbara’s last with a list of thoughts on going home.  I connected with so many of these from my own study abroad experience, expect I think Barbara probably says them much more eloquently than I would have at age 21.  Anyway, here are some of my favorites:

• You can’t run away from life.  Life follows you.  Sometimes you can put it on hold for a very short while, but it will still be there.
  

  This is not Barbara

• In light of above, you can use struggle and hard times to get stronger.  Sometime you can feel yourself toughening up.
• Maybe devices that save time and labor are not all they are cracked up to be.  There is a beauty in work.
• Language is beautiful, and powerful.
• All cultures have good and bad things about them; some should be loved, some should be scorned. America is not as bad as I thought it was when I left.
• Sometimes I wonder if coming abroad teaches you more about a foreign place, or about the place you left.
• There are too many problems to fix in the world, but we have to keep trying because there is no other option.

Thanks to Barbara and My Embassy Letters!