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The return flights from Cairo last night were long but bearable. Knowing that I was going home, even if its to a house I have yet to truly live in, was a comfort after seven long, but wonderful, weeks away. As we landed at Logan Airport, Christina lent me her cell phone to call my dad to pick me up. I hesitated realizing that I had not dialed a phone in seven weeks-a small but great accomplishment.

I sense that over the coming days and weeks, little things like this will expose themselves and I will truly realize the enormity of the amazing and life-changing experience I have just endured. Far too much has gone through my eyes, ears, nose, mind and heart to even being to process it, but slowly it will come in fits and spurts.

If I have absorbed no new information or skills from my travels, I will know it was not without benefit. I have had almost two months, not only to learn about a new culture, but more so I have had that time to examine myself. Unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations force us to turn the questions on ourselves when we ask them of others. If I take nothing else from my time in Egypt, Syria and Qatar, it will be an awareness of myself and a lasting desire to continue learning who that person is.

The original Extenders in the desert.

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