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Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter: January 2009

Dear Readers,
The big news is I posted the brochure for the Worldschool Travel Tour to Guatemala in July, 2009 and I made the finishing touches on an interview I did of Peter Kowalke! I'm really excited about the tour and hearing people's reaction to the interview with Peter Kowalke's thought provoking stories and observations.

My plan for the winter is to travel down to Guatemala and scout things out for the trip in July. I also plan to explore some new places in Central America, improve my Spanish, and keep myself busy during the season when I don't have any landscaping work anyway!

The Guatemala tour is only $2000 for a three week trip, July 1st-22nd, 2009, including airfare from most U.S. cities and lodging in Guatemala. If you're interested let me know right away since there's already a handful of people who have shown interest and I'm only looking for a maximum of four people coming on the tour!

I've also been working on a tour to Japan that's tentatively scheduled for November 2nd-22nd, 2009. Let me know if you're interested and I'll be posting more info soon!

Other than that I thought I'd just share some Stranger in a Strange Land themed quotes that guided me in 2008:

"Culture shock is what happens when you take a man out of his own world and put him down in a place where the assumptions, the - the standards of being a person - are so different that he can't possible understand them. He isn't built that way. If he's - facile - he can pretend to be someone else until he gets back to his own world. Or he can just collapse and let himself be rebuilt - however. There's no other way."
-Stephen R. Donaldson, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

"Men are not free when they are doing just what they like... Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes, and there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving."
-D.H. Lawrence

"The Dagara believe that everyone is born with a purpose, and that this purpose must be known in order to ensure an integrated way of living. People ignorant of their purpose are like ships adrift in a hostile sea. They are circling around."
-Malidoma Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
-Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

"What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true."
-The Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, mystic poet and saint of India

"So hold nice and close, won't you get to your soul, so when it is cold you won't feel so alone, 'cause the roads that you take may just crack and break with the changes you will confront. With each gift that you share you may heal and repair, with each choice you make you may help someone's day. Well, I know you are strong, may your journey be long, and now I wish you the best of luck. "
-Xavier Rudd from his song "Messages"

May your journey be long, I wish you the best of luck dear readers!
-Eli