WE INTERRUPT "LETTERS TO MYSELF" TO SAY: GOOD MORNING, BAGHDAD!

I’m heading for Baghdad tonight—going to document a shipment of AmeriCares humanitarian aid. We are flying in from an airbase in Holland aboard a Dutch Airforce Cargo plane.

Already I’m feeling a bit antsy. I get this feeling of expectation whenever I go but it’s never the same when I get there. From the moment I know I’m going anywhere, I begin to form a mental picture in my head of what it’s going to be like when I get there but it is never the same! I’ve been to a lot of far away places—the furthest away being Antartica—but Baghdad already seems to be one of the most exciting, and I haven’t even gotten on the plane!

The war is over, "sort of." AmeriCares is supplying us with bullet proof vests so I guess an American even under the label of Humanitarian Aid Person might still be a prized target for whoever is left of Saddam’s loyalists. So, the trip already has already elevated itself, in my mind anyway, to the level of an adventure.

I ran into my son’s football coach at Stop & Shop yesterday, where I was stocking up on my medications (one of the joys of being a recent heart patient). When I told him where I was off to, he instantly got a look of shock on his face—so there is still a certain cache about travel to Iraq.

For me, this trip, like all my adventures, will be a very personal experience. Whatever the reality of the place turns out to be, I know I will not be disappointed—I never am no matter where I go.

The reality of anyplace is such a cool thing to experience if I am just open to it. That’s all it takes. One of my favorite things in all the world, is to wander around a strange city with my camera in hand. Last year at this time I was doing the same thing, only in Madagascar, on an AmeriCares mission. There was so much to learn there as there will be in Baghdad.

It makes me think that someday I must write a book just about wandering through foreign places. Even though I’m focused on the world inside myself, focusing on the world outside serves to change us, especially when the place is a foreign one. We begin to see ourselves in contrast to the way other people live and that teaches us a little bit more about who we are ourselves.