Just had a look at a very interesting photo essay of american soldiers that were wounded in Iraq over at Mother Jones. And I came across this quote from 21 year-old Sam Ross from Dunbar Township, Pennsylvania: "It was the best experience of my life. Twenty-one years old and I've seen a couple of countries. I've been pretty much everywhere and done everything...I got to interact with people of another culture, people who live their lives 100 percent different than the way we live here. That's something that one in a million people will ever get to see in their lifetime—another culture." (the rest of the essay is here.) And it really made me stop and think. I've been lucky to travel a bunch and meet a whole lot of people from a bunch of different cultures. And overall I guess my feeling is the exact opposite from his. I feel like I've been almost nowhere, and done almost nothing, and I've interacted with people from different cultures and found them to be pretty much the same as me. It's a funny feeling I guess. The more I travel, the less I know. And while I feel closer and closer to people from all corners of the earth, I start to feel more and more distant from people back home. Interesting.