brief update

We've decided to wait an extra day in Boldrum, to enjoy the sun, cheap pension, and let Clara look at jewelry!

We received our Visas to Pakistan yesterday, so now we need to figure out Iran and India and we will be on our way East. It doesn't help that Cheney and company seem to want to start bombing Iran before they are swept out the door.

We made friends with an Iraqi Kurd on the boat from the Ukraine to Istanbul. He invited us to his town in Iraq and he told us that it was plenty safe enough in Kurdistan. We've been in email contact with him, and he has since told us with the Turkish and PKK problem in the area that it is no longer safe there. That is how tenuous this area of the world is. One thing that seems to be clear here, which one doesn't get from reading the American press is that Kurdistan is a defacto country now. They have their own leaders, their own army, their own borders. Although the United States may want to try and keep this "one Iraq" policy, it seems as if this part of the world is working well towards accepting this as a reality.

How about those Sox!