by Jessica Kuzmier

Created on: September 07, 2010   Last Updated: June 02, 2011

When the attacks of September 11th took place in New York and Washington, it began to seem as though it was a dangerous time for an American to travel. There were those I spoke to at the time who thought it might be better to just stay at home. Media seemed to imply that there were people out there who just wanted American blood. Television pictures of people dancing in the streets at the destruction of the Twin Towers seemed to confirm that. "They" don't like us. Travel isn't worth it; let's just watch reruns of "Survivor" for entertainment.

     But of course, this wasn't the opinion of all Americans. Plenty of people traveled pretty much as they did before, removal of shoes notwithstanding. Lisa Beamer, the widow of the hero Todd Beamer on Flight 93, even traveled on the same flight that her husband was taking that day, just to show that it wasn't unsafe for people to travel. There were those that I met that in sheer defiance decided to travel to the city more, not less. Their opinion was, I'm not letting the terrorists take away my city, my right to travel. In a sense, they decided to not let the terrorists win by making them afraid in their own country.

     Elinor Burkett, a journalist and professor, went through a similar situation. Feeling the ennui of a comfortable middle age settling upon them, she and her husband Dennis decide to shake up their lives before old age became a reality. In the months before September 11, she applied for and received a Fulbright grant to teach journalism in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. Different enough from the places she had taught before, not so dangerous as to be Pakistan, but not the First World, Burkett was off on her adventure with her trusty sidekick husband. Never mind that none of her friends knew anything about the place, and that she received a travel warning from the State Department urging all non-essential American personnel to leave the country before she even left the comfort of her Catskills home. Suffice it to say, this comfortable journalist trying to get out of a rut made the decision to head to a country that is so unheard of, my own word processing program registered it as a typo, with no alternative suggestions.

     On August 25, 2001 Burkett made her arrival to this Central Asian republic, not knowing what to expect, and then soon wondering what the heck she was doing there to begin with. A post-Soviet republic stuck between

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