For the sake of the world

Please read this: "What Every American Should Know About the Middle East." While it by no means contains everything that you should know, it's got a good deal of basic information (differences between Muslim/Arab, Sunni/Shia, Muslim/Islam etc.) Do yourself a favor, do your country a favor, do the world a favor and EDUCATE yourself.

I've been considering a Masters degree in Middle East Studies or something like that basically so that I can educate people who don't know about the Middle East. People who are either misinformed, never had a chance to learn, or are ignorant.

My class was canceled, making the total number of hours I've taught this week 3 (it's Tuesday evening). And I saw 4 cats in a tree and 2 more getting ready to join them, super awesome. Please donate to my camera phone fund so I can document such awesomeness.

I feel like I'm getting sick. Trying to load up on Vitamin C and Airborne. I'm just gonna hang out on the couch tonight and do some work and maybe finish Lost Season 3.

OH and my Goal of the Month (GOTM) is to not eat candy (except I can cheat once a week if I want). This includes cookies and ice cream :( But I can eat these chocolate covered cardboard diet cookies if I want. They taste pretty awful so I usually only eat one at a time for the bit of chocolate. I never used to be a sweets person, so I'm trying to rid myself of this curse. Plus the fruit here is usually quite good so I should be enjoying that instead!

Please comment! It keeps me motivated to write!

The New York Times

Today I read 2 interesting NY Times' articles. The first, which you can find here, advocates a "fairer" tax system. This fairer system would tax for obnoxious consumption (good idea!), sending spam e-mails (why didn't someone think of this before?), family and friends junk mail (YES! although my family/friends aren't that bad), and emoticon users ( :8) ). Finally, a way to pay off our tremendous budget deficit! (Thanks for the article Tracy).

Second, which you can find here, was sent to me as an alumna of Blair Academy. It details the life of a current female Afghani student and her soccer career.

I felt inspired and I miss writing things like this, so I wrote a letter to the Headmaster. See my response below. Please feel free to add your comments (but please don't correct my grammar - after correcting grammar all day my brain goes to waste at night).

I was very pleased to read the article in The New York Times about Ms. Kohestani. It's stories like these that make me proud to be an alumna of Blair Academy. I applaud both her for her courage and tenacity as well as the school community for accepting her and welcoming her in true Blair fashion. I'm sure it must be a difficult and fascinating, not to mention challenging, journey for her.

So often girls are denied the right to education for one reason or another. I've been living in Turkey for the past 13 months and have heard many stories about girls in the eastern parts of Turkey even being denied primary school education (which is legally required by the Turkish government) due to familial traditions. Of course, the situation in Afghanistan was drastically different from the situation in Turkey, but an overall theme can be seen: the lack of either options or opportunities for women in Middle Eastern countries to exercise their basic human right to education. Whether it be for political, religious or traditional reasons, women simply do not have the rights that we in the US take for granted.

Now is a historical time in Turkey. The Parliament has passed an amendment removing the ban on covered girls from attending university. This is causing quite an uproar as the secularists fear Turkey is headed towards Shariah law.

I, however, applaud this decision as a step in the right direction. A step towards keeping (many covered women flee to other countries for university) and educating intellectual, Muslim women. A oxymoron to some, but a necessity if Turkey wants to move forward in the world.

What is my point in writing this? One of the things I thought benefited me the most at Blair was the exposure to a multi-cultural student body. Coming from Blairstown, where just about everyone attends the same church on Sunday, does the same activities, makes around the same amount of money, has a similar ethnic background, and you can count the number of minorities on one (or maybe two) hands; I was starving for culture and diversity. And I found it at Blair. I regret not taking advantage of all the activities, lectures, and events that had a multi-cultural theme. I regret not making more of an effort to get to know the international students.

The most important thing that Blair gave me (or helped me develop further) was the desire to learn more about different cultures. I encourage the school to do more to find girls like Ms. Kohestani. To find more women who have had their right to education taken away from them for one reason or another. To find more Muslim students. To do more to increase the diversity that makes Blair so amazing.

That's enough for today. I'm recovering from being quite sick last night and should do some work before I go to bed.