Edward Campana, Professor at the Strayer University, sharing his experience in Turkey during a trip with RumiForum:
I am Ed Campana. I teach Humanities at Strayer University in the Washington DC area. It is working adults who take usually four hour classes once a week. I want to thank, and this is not pro-forma; I mean it in the bottom of my heart. I wanna thank the Rumi Forum for this opportunity and especially Ali, Jenna, Zafer and Vedat who is not here. You are all the underpinnings who really make this what it is. And to my class; without you I will be the only student in the group. This is just a small movement but the principal of, it is better to light one match, than to curse the darkness, and this is a start. I had tremendous anxiety; this is the first time I came to Turkey and I was not sure what to expect. What I did is, I left my USA flight t-shirt and Boston Red Sox cap at home because I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t want to be a moving target.
Fortunately, I was completely wrong! But I didn’t know much about the people. I know you were going to put your best foot forward, and even if we saw the cream of the crop with the people that you introduced us to it was still stellar and sterling; the people you showed us. Some you mentioned on the street and so forth, they were just super courteous, really really nice, and they didn’t know who we were other than that we were foreigners, but God-fearing and God-loving people. If you want to take this negative, I don’t think it is, the laissez faire that we recess, I was just overflowed of good things. I am gonna need couple of months to absorb what we had over the last week or so. If you could incorporate some, a little more down time to relax, just to pull our thoughts together, if you could; and again it is the laissez faire we recess. The bonanza of enrichment is immeasurable, what we went through, and please don’t take it as a complaint; it is not. But it would be nice to catch my breath and the thing is I am not the oldest one in the group either, but good…