The Last Word...

As you have all realized by now, this blog took me almost a year to complete after my return home. I wish I had a good excuse for this but the only excuse I have is that while I was traveling, writing about my experiences was like writing about a person sitting next to you every day. When I returned home, I left that person behind and it was not only difficult to write about it because part of me missed it so much but also because the memory faded fast, much too fast.
Because it has been so long, let me remind you that my last blog was A Lesson From the End of My Rope. So if you'll scroll down to Diving Off the Deep End and read up, you'll read them all in the appropriate order. This is, obviously, the last entry.

Now I'm about to start a new adventure. As fate would have it, I'm returning to the only country not covered in this blog - Cambodia. It was a place I found difficult to love and hard to enjoy for several reasons. A) The country is very shocking to a person's soul. There are deep and lasting scars from an era I don't remember and don't understand. B) The last step on any journey is really the first step on another. And I was headed home. My mind was back in Texas so my heart naturally followed...
In just over a month, I will pack my bags once again but this time I'm no longer a backpacker but a volunteer. I'm not sure it's a move up on the evolutionary ladder but it is a move in a different direction. Please keep me in your thoughts as I attempt this journey. It's a big, exciting step through a door God opened for me. So even though I feel a bit like Jonah being spit up on a land I didn't want to go to, I know it's where I need to be.

I leave you with the following poems which were written in Cambodia.


When a traveler grows weary of travel
He will find some place he can stay
He’s not looking for a home
He’s just tired of being gone
He feels his soul has some debt to repay

So he will cross both time and distance
On a map of his own restless soul
Maybe all he needs
Is a glimpse of the sea
He’s a rolling stone that’s forgotten how to roll

So he heads back to from whence he started
Or he searches out some tropical shore
And under the shade of tree
He suddenly sees
He’s ready to travel once more



And the finale ...

She sailed to distant, hapless shores
And walked down trails never travelled before
Just as a scientist must discover
So an explorer has got to explore
In the end you follow your heart – nothing more


Be on the look out for the next instillation of Tales of a Modern Day Gypsy - The Phnom Penh Parables!


Forever from the Road
Charlsea